Interior designer Canberra homeowners brief for the cold half of the year

The house you are probably renovating

The inner south filled out in the 1950s and 60s, and the pattern repeats street after street. Brick veneer, single glazed windows in aluminium or unrestored timber, ceilings a touch low, and a living room placed for the view rather than the sun. Glass often faces west, where it does nothing in June and too much in January. The kitchen sits at the cold end of the house because that is where the service side went.

There is a number for this. The ACT has required an energy efficiency rating on every home sold since 1999. The ACT Government's review of that scheme found the average rating of houses resold under it moved from 2.5 to 2.9 stars out of six. The bones are good. They were simply drawn for an era of cheap heating.

None of that calls for a gut job. It changes the order of decisions. Glazing, insulation and zoning get settled first, then the finishes are chosen to suit them.

Warmth is mostly a detailing problem

Plenty of what keeps a Canberra room comfortable belongs to the interior drawings, not the mechanical trades. Curtains are the clearest example. A lined curtain hung on an exposed track lets cold air slide down the glass and out along the floor all night. Put the same curtain in a closed pelmet with returns to the reveal and it works. That pelmet has to be drawn into the ceiling and the joinery early, because retrofitting one after the cornice is set looks like an apology.

• Pelmets and full height reveal returns designed with the curtain, not after it
• Double glazing decided before window seats, sills and reveal depths are drawn
• Timber and wool underfoot in rooms without slab heating, stone kept to the heated zones
• Doors put back between kitchen, living and hall so one zone can be heated at night
• Fewer downlights, since every one is a hole cut through the ceiling insulation
• Draught sealing detailed at joinery gaps, hatches and skirtings while the walls are open

Heating is now an interior decision

Since December 2023 the ACT has prevented new fossil fuel gas network connections, and the Territory intends to be off gas by 2045. Most Canberra renovations are therefore planned around reverse cycle or a hydronic heat pump, and both of them want space.

Head units need clear wall, which is the same wall you wanted for a bedhead or a tall cupboard. Hydronic panels compete with sofas and bedside tables. Ducting has to find a path through a 1960s roof space that was never built for it. The outdoor unit has to sit somewhere that is not under a bedroom window. Settle all of it before joinery goes to the cabinetmaker. Settled later, it usually costs a run of shelving.

Forrest, Griffith, Red Hill and Yarralumla

These streets came with generous blocks and gardens now sixty years mature. The elm doing lovely things in February is also blocking the low winter sun the house depends on. Cold air drains off the hills and settles at the bottom of a slope, so two houses on one street can feel different at seven in the morning. Any interior designer Canberra owners bring in should walk the block before drawing the plan.

Precinct rules push most work to the rear and the interior, which suits this sort of project. The front elevation stays as it is. The back opens up, and the plan is rearranged so the rooms used at night are the ones that hold heat.

Working with a Gold Coast studio from here

We do not keep a Canberra office and will not pretend otherwise. Design is led from the Gold Coast studio and delivered through measured drawings, 3D renders, virtual reality walkthroughs and drafting packages, with site visits when being in the room matters. Clients send photographs of the same rooms in morning and afternoon light in June. That tells us more than a summer inspection ever does.

The portfolio behind that includes four residences completed on the Sovereign Islands, among them homes of more than 4,000 square metres internal floor area valued at more than $20 million. There are the Lindfield and Blakehurst projects in Sydney, a Melbourne Georgian, and a Brisbane renovation. Luxxe delivered the interiors of Duddingston House, the Category A listed Palladian mansion in Edinburgh designed by Sir William Chambers in the 1760s. Edinburgh is not Canberra, but the questions a cold house asks are close cousins.

Full home design, kitchens, bathrooms and laundries, home cinema and bar, decoration, drafting and new build collaboration are all part of the service. If you want an interior designer Canberra winters will not embarrass, tell us which rooms you avoid in July and why.