Teams on The Block NZ: Villa Wars were given an epic task – to style a bedroom for the flip cover of Your Home and Garden magazine, with the best cover shot chosen to appear in the upcoming January issue.
Each and every issue, Your Home and Garden magazine style and photograph some of the most beautiful rooms in New Zealand… but this time it was the teams on The Block NZ: Villa Wars’ turn.
Interior designer and YH&G contributor Alex Fulton was on-hand to offer advice, and to judge their efforts. Alex asked teams to stamp their style on the cover shot, while thinking about perspective, space and depth. Since this room was being styled for a magazine cover and not a room someone can walk into, composition was important, and how the space would look when layered with coverlines.
Each team was allowed two hours to shop and one hour to style the room to a very specific brief. Each of the four spaces came pre-painted with colours from the Dulux range and with a piece of furniture that the teams had to incorporate. Check out the teams’ efforts in this gallery…
Words by: Johanna Thornton
Photos by: Melanie Jenkins & Todd Eyre
Cat and Jeremy were given the theme ‘Structured Organic’ with a wall in mossy green Dulux ‘Tauherenikau’ and a wicker armchair from Indie Home Collective. Model Lou wears Kow Tow.
Cat and Jeremy’s finished cover. “Their room was really appealing. They completely nailed colour and texture but they didn’t work to the brief, which was ‘Structured Organic’. It wasn’t very structured, so the brief was taken a bit far afield,” said judge Alex Fulton.
Sarah and Minnane were tasked with translating a theme of ‘Revamped Retro’. Their space was painted in Dulux ‘Clifford Bay’ and their key piece of furniture was Kent Coffey ‘Townhouse’ tallboy drawers from Mr Bigglesworthy. Model Maddie wears twenty-seven names.
Sarah and Minanne’s finished cover. Judge Alex Fulton said: “What let them down was not letting the main piece of furniture shine. The Dulux shade was a very 3D colour in person but everything looked flat in the final image. As well as this, everything in the room was on the same eye-line.”
Brooke and Mitch had ‘The Dreamer’ theme, with soft pink Dulux ‘Kumutoto Half’ on the walls and a pendant light from Indie Home Collective to work into their look. Model Maggie wears Kate Sylvester.
Brooke and Mitch’s finished cover. “The colours were beautiful and soft but they were almost a little too tentative about adding things in. There was no fluidity with their styling props which made the space hard to digest,” said judge Alex Fulton.
The winners were Jamie and Hayden with their ‘Modern Minimalist’ look, complete with Dulux ‘Okarito’ and a framed artwork (with two circles) from Paperplane store. As luck would have it this monochrome look is in keeping with Jamie and Hayden’s interior style and, surprise surprise, they nailed it! Model Lou wears Zambesi.
Jamie and Hayden’s cover was the challenge winner. “They were really good at taking advice and direction,” says Alex. “Luckily they chose their favourite colours but they had the right balance of black and white. Black and white may seem an easy choice but it’s really hard to get softness in a space with polarising colours and they did that with texture and with grey tones. It worked really well. Your eye nicely jumped from one piece to the next.”
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