Home profile
Meet and greet: Darren Palmer (interior designer) and Olivier Duvillard (cosmetic industry expert), their teenage son and their two dogs, Frankie and Razzie.
The property: Three-level, four-bedroom, four-bathroom home near Bondi Beach, Sydney.
Visiting friends can help you discover a new area, which is how interior designer and The Block Australia judge Darren Palmer fell in love with the street he now lives on. “A friend of ours, Barry Du Bois from The Living Room, lives a couple of doors down. We went to his place for Christmas parties and then thought, ‘We’d love it here, it’d be great’,” he says.
Darren and his husband Olivier Duvillard, a cosmetics industry expert, kept their eyes on real estate listings. When this home came up in 2015, they just had to see it. “The second my husband and I walked through the front door, we thought, ‘This is our house’,” recalls Darren.
Despite it being “very dark and higgledy-piggledy”, they had a good feeling about it. The home was a two-storey building when they moved in – a 1930s California bungalow downstairs with a 2010 addition upstairs. The walls were a “dirty cream colour”, so that was the first thing that had to go. “I hired a spray rig, bought a tonne of paint and then painted everything white,” he says.
Darren’s ambassador duties for an appliance brand once required him for a photo shoot in his house. So, he did a speedy renovation to get it ready. “I did the kitchen, laundry and dining room in two-and-a-half weeks. It was like a real-life [episode of] The Block Australia,” he recalls.
He hosted his 40th birthday party there shortly after, with fellow judges Neale Whitaker and Shaynna Blaze on the guest list, so the pressure was on to make the place presentable. “They came in an hour after I’d unpacked boxes,” he recalls.
The high-profile interior designer says his home might have been meeting others’ expectations, but it still didn’t feel right for him. “So in 2018, I started again.” A good 18 months was spent “ticking details over” in his mind, then on paper, before he worked with an architect on the final plans. In 2022, a construction company began the rebuild.
It’s been upsized from two storeys to three, with a more open-plan design. One of Darren’s favourite spaces is the new “very sexy” kitchen. “I ended up making it probably a metre wider, so we got a much bigger island bench,” he explains. Made from Monreale marble with soft pinks and sandy tones, it’s the hero of the space and complements the impressive joinery, which features grooved Kinsman Avalon doors in Coastal Oak Woodmatt. “It’s got this lovely coastal feeling to it,” shares Darren.
The home epitomises a Bondi oasis, with four bedrooms plus a study, two lounge areas, a pool and multiple alfresco zones. “This is actually the longest-term house I’ve had in my entire life, except for when I was a child,” says Darren of their home of nine years. “Our teenage son’s lived here most of his life. It’s definitely been a family home.”
While it’s in Darren’s nature to already have his sights set on the next renovation, he also has his hands full with the latest season of The Block Australia and multiple business ventures, from art and rug ranges to home fragrances and tapware. “To be honest with you, the next project would happily be about a year away from now,” he says with a laugh.
Home truths
What style is your home? It’s intentionally minimalistic with a lot of sandy pink tones.
Biggest benefit of renovating? We’ve got a lot more space now and it’s a lot more usable.
Your favourite design choice? The double-sided fireplace is impressive. It’s in our winter living room, with the study on the other side.
Did you reuse any elements? We saved the perfectly stable granny flat on the property from going to landfill and transported it to Hyams Beach to turn it into a holiday home.
Shop Darren Palmer and Olivier Duvillard’s house style
See more images of Darren Palmer and Olivier Duvillard’s house below
The double-sided fireplace makes the “winter” living room a cosy space to relax.
The cosy ”winter” living room features a cosy green armchair as well as an MCM House Tonk stool, which is made of paulownia wood. The coffee table chimes with a Darren Palmer Zen White rug.
The Capri stone coffee tables in small, medium and large look great grouped together.
The bed is dressed with a chocolate-coloured linen duvet set, which is a delicious contrast to the sandy shades of the Carpet Court Bali sheer curtains in Flax. A Darren Palmer Travertine Brown rug adds textural elegance.
Porter’s Paints Interno Lime Wash in Cinnamon Sugar creates a chic finish. The Zach bed frame is also joined by a Sorrento bedside table, both from Lifely, with a burl wood lamp by Rachel Donath.
The desk in the study is designed with Kinsman Avalon profiles in Coastal Oak Woodmatt. Darren and Olivier teamed it with an oak and leather chair.
Read this next:
- Take a tour of Maddy and Charlotte’s winning house on The Block Australia 2024
- Inside former The Block NZ winners Alice and Caleb Pearson’s latest passion project
- Pink frangipani blossoms add a pop of colour to this Hamptons-style home
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