Design News

The fourth 2024 Resene Colour Home Awards finalist is a burst of sunshine

Article by Your Home and Garden

An iconic Wellington house shines just as bright, years on

Designed by iconic Aotearoa architect Roger Walker, Mary and Michael Donn’s 1977 Wellington home is a burst of sunshine in the often-cloudy city.

When it came time to paint the exterior, the couple initially planned a white facade with a contrasting trim. However, Roger strongly advocated for Resene Buttercup, to create a “gorse bush” effect against the dark Wellington hills, with Resene Bunker on the foundations, and Resene Sepia on the weatherboards and window frames. Three pipe windows – “the only frivolous 1970s Walkerism we could afford”, say the couple – were painted in Resene Minsk, Resene Hot Purple and Resene Verdun Green.

“The house has always been the colours it is now, inside and out,” say Mary and Michael. “The colours inside, and the 1980s extension at the back, is all us, reacting to the original exterior colours. The extension exterior is painted in Resene Hot Chile, to differentiate it from the original house.”

Inside, the house is just as joyously colourful. A large majority of the interior – the hallway, main bedroom, living room, kitchen and dining – is decked out in Resene Coral. The doors are all different colours of the rainbow, to make it easier to direct visitors to appropriate rooms, ranging from Resene Bondi Blue to Resene Trinidad and Resene Moon Yellow.

Conventional colour advice, such as painting bedrooms in paler hues to enlarge the sense of space, was shrugged off in favour of creating a “cosy cave feeling”.

One room, which gets the full blast of the southerly wind, is painted in Resene Yukon Gold with a Resene Brown Bramble ceiling, to accentuate the sense of a cocoon.

Last year, Mary and Michael repainted the exterior but stuck to the colours that now seem as big a part of the house as its foundations. The colours, which came with the British Standard colour codes available in 1977, were translated to more recent versions of the standard, but remarkably, the Resene paint names had not changed in nearly 50 years.

The exterior walls and roof were also coated with Resene Clearcoat UVS, a UV inhibitor, to keep the colours vibrant.

Having such strong wall colours has made furnishing the house a challenge, but Mary says it also provided a good excuse to re-cover retro lounge furniture in orange.

“Many people are curious about the house, and some love it, as do we. Some are shocked when we say it’s been these colours for nearly 50 years. It would be very hard to leave here and find somewhere that has been so much fun to live in.”