Living in Singapore - Decorating a Grand Home in WA - Liaising with La

We recently had the pleasure of working with Vishmi De Silva, collaborating to style and furnish her majestic Queen Anne Federation home in Margaret River, Western Australia - Birdwood Estate.

Vishmi worked with us from abroad—Singapore in fact, to help style and furnish her elegant residence. Our team worked to bring to life the design concept Vishmi had in mind, including colours and inspiration from native birds of the area with our navy range for the Blue Wren suite and our duck egg blue pieces for the Kookaburra Suite.

Birdwood Estate, which features 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, will be available on the short term rental market in Margaret River from February 2019. Truly unique and absolutely stunning, this is certainly a property to put on your list.

1. Can you tell us a little about the house you have furnished and the interior style you wanted to achieve?

We have a three storey Queen Anne Federation style home nestled between Margaret River icons, Cape Lodge and Clairault | Streicker Wines. Built from solid limestone, it has a number of distinctive features – four open fireplaces, exposed beams made from railway sleepers salvaged from Westralia and traditional double hung windows, to name a few.

The rooms are very generous in size with high ceiling which meant we needed a lot of furniture and soft furnishings to fill the space. We wanted to create an overall Hamptons feel to freshen things up, but at the same time embrace the rustic interiors and took inspiration from Soho Farmhouse. A touch of Asia to embrace the Singapore connection and a desire to tie in with the extensive birdlife in the area.

2. How did you find working with Lavender Hill Interiors (LHI) remotely to furnish your house as you are located in WA and they are based in Sydney?

Living overseas, working full time with young children (an infant and a toddler) and no interior design experience whatsoever, this was bold task!

I was basically furnishing an entire house in Margaret River, from Singapore, working with Sydney based furniture company but the team at Lavender Hill made it so easy; their website is simple to navigate, contained all the dimensions and 360 photos of the products but most of all Lavender Hill was one stop shop with all the pieces pre styled with the ability to mix and match with great customer support.

I had to do a lot of homework first, working on free online software programs to lay out the house, create moodboards (this is how I found Lavender Hill Interior in the first place)… and Pinterest! Pinterest! Pinterest! Each of my bedrooms take inspiration from a native bird in the area and some of the colours aren’t traditional Hamptons.

3. How were LHI able to help you with choosing the furniture and homewares and styling each room?

Lavender Hill Interiors were well equipped to deal with styling and furnishing – distance not such an issue in the digital age.

An informative and navigable website, experienced stylists within the team and impressive supporting infrastructure – it was no more difficult than dealing with someone in Western Australia.

The pre-styling efforts at Lavender Hill Interiors made some things especially easy. For example, we were able to run with a duck egg blue theme in the living room and Kookaburra Suite, the new navy range in my Blue Wren suite, the charcoal in the cockatoo room and neutrals in theHoney Eater and Western Spinebill suites, it was all very straightforward.

A special call out to their team - they were kind enough to put together photos with décor pieces to help with some of the coffee table and side table styling.

4. Can you tell us how you found the quality of the pieces once you received them without having actually seeing them in person?

I coordinated with Lavender Hill and their delivery team to fly down. I was so anxious as there were a lot of moving parts not to mention it was only the third time I had been on the property! The moment of realisation was not at all horrifying, despite my fears. In fact it was quite the opposite - the quality was actually much better than envisaged.

The property sits between two luxury Margaret River offerings and after seeing the furniture they were all interested in learning more about where the products were sourced.

The quality was actually much better than I had thought. My property will be on the short term holiday rental market in Margaret River and we are next door to some iconic hotels and wineries. After the furniture was unboxed I had some neighbouring hospitality professionals come and look at it and loved it so much they have asked for the details.

5. How was the process of ordering and the delivery of your order?

We ordered approximately 35 separate pieces and like with other aspects, there was some fear! Again though, fears were misplaced as it only took one trip down from Singapore to ensure everything went smoothly, and indeed it did. Clearly experienced in logistics, even the delivery guys (and girl) were great!

6. Any other comments?

It’s a different world these days, with everything from websites to furniture apps intended to make life easier. Working alongside a quality operator like Lavender Hill Interiors, we lost nothing compared to undertaking the exercise with a local player. Being up in Singapore I also looked at working with a buyer in China at wholesale rates but all in all, Lavender Hill was what I decided on given the import cost, process and the quality control.

We loved the result, and would certainly recommend Lavender Hill Interiors, irrespective of geographies!

We very much enjoyed the creativity of this project, as well as the challenge of working with a client overseas.

We regularly work with clients who want our team to pull together different elements for a polished and cohesive finished product, and we’re thrilled with the final result of this stunning limestone Queen Anne Federation home.