A house that dreams in colour

The Sydney-based interior designer Yasmine Ghoniem grew up in the Middle East, and was raised by an Australian mother and an Egyptian father. As a child, she disappeared into the world of books, film and music. A musician and designer by training, she found that interior design spoke to her many disparate interests. “I knew that I loved furniture design, lighting design, textile design,” she says. “I could have gone into any one of those disciplines individually, but I wanted something that encompassed them all.”

A neutral, Scandi-inflected coastal aesthetic still prevails in Australia, to which Ghoniem’s work, characterised by a maximalist use of colour and pattern, is an antidote. “Colour is just so joyful,” she says. “I couldn’t live without it.” As a child, she would “throw outfits together in this unbecoming yet flattering way,” she says. “Where it shouldn’t go together, but it does. I think that’s how people see my interiors.”

When Ghoniem was asked to design the home of a creative couple with children, she was aware of the client’s penchant for wallpaper and colour. Their home was a largely unremarkable five-bedroom, mock-Colonial house five hours’ drive from Sydney.

The family didn’t want to embark on any extensive building work, so the refurb was largely cosmetic. No fan of minimalism, Ghoniem took the verdant surroundings of coastal New South Wales as her starting point, dressing the bedrooms in ornate, leafy wallpapers, with more appearing throughout the house in bathrooms and the living spaces. “The wallpapers are there to complement the landscape,” Ghoniem says. “You walk into these little worlds.”

Ghoniem named the house Plantasia; cinematic wit and whimsy feature throughout the building, beginning at the entrance, which features an oversized front door painted a bright butter yellow. It’s the perfect introduction to what lies within: Victoriana elements, including a circular velvet ottoman fitted with a gingham skirt; ornately carved baby-blue joinery; more of that vibrant, floral wallpaper. Recurring shapes appear throughout: mauve squares painted on the living-room ceiling nod to the tiles used in the fireplace and the kitchen. Warm cork flooring softens the ambience of the large rooms. Plushly upholstered seating, mismatched vintage rattan chairs, and miscellaneous ceramics create a feeling that this house has been lived in for generations.

Might these interiors be considered a little on the intense side? Ghoniem admits that a project like this “isn’t everyone’s cup of tea” but that “there are ways to dress colour and be tonal and yet still be quiet and muted.” With Plantasia, she has created a home where a slightly surreal sense of fun prevails – and escape from city life is truly possible. “We wanted the house to feel like a playground for the adults,” she says, “and not just the kids.”

It’s not often that interior designers get to experience their creations once they’ve handed over the keys. But Ghoniem was invited to stay in the home after the project was finished. “The fireplace was lit, I was watching a movie,” she says. “It was a nice moment to realise we’d nailed the feeling, the emotive part to it all.”

Photographs by Anson Smart