When Amy Coombes designs a home for a Landmark Homes Manawatū client, every choice has to answer a brief. When she finally designed her own, after the family's Hokowhitu section waited seven years for their building schedule to allow it, every choice answered only one question: what do I actually want to live with?
The home itself is remarkable: 250 square metres of two-storey family house on a 359 square metre section, a double-height atrium, cedar-wrapped mezzanine, and a stunning, moody kitchen. The design has since collected first and second at the TIDA 2024 Bathroom of the Year awards and a Highly Commended for the kitchen. It is also home to a family of five, plus Costa the cat, which is precisely the point of everything that follows.
In the open-plan space, two big sliders sit either side of an internal corner. Amy requested a curved track carrying two separate sheers, so the kitchen curtain can pull right back to the dining corner and never blows out the open doors in a summer breeze. Function first, and it drapes beautifully, softening what she calls the rigidity of the moody kitchen.
The sheers throughout are floor to ceiling, wall to wall, in a recycled polyester range: a lighter touch environmentally, and harder wearing than a true linen sheer. In Amy’s words: for the real people who live here.
And the detail we quietly love most: the kids' rooms and second living run automated blockout roller blinds behind the sheers, on timers. Up in the morning, down at night to hold the winter warmth, nobody's hands on the fabric, and when the family's away the house carries on looking lived in. One less thing to nag about, designed in from the start.
In the master, wall-to-wall dark sheers and linings turn the deep blue-black palette into an adults' retreat. The icing on the cake, as Amy put it.
That's what a professional chooses when the client is her own family: curved tracks, honest fabrics, automation that removes jobs instead of adding gadgets. We'll take that brief any day.
