News — house

CALL IT FATE. Designer Melody Duron and her husband, Bill, were planning to downsize to a smaller house in Toronto five years ago but,thanks to a hot realestate market,they sold quickly and suddenly found themselves without a home. “It all happened so fast!” she says. With their belongings in storage, they decamped to their weekend retreatin the hills of Mulmur, Ont., to plan their next move. Dubbed Lyric Pond,the 44-hectare property comprises wooded trails, five ponds, rolling fields and a country home that’s so remarkable,this is the third time H&H has photographed it. The first was for the November 1997...

here was a time in my life when all I desired was an entirely white home — white floors, white walls, white furniture, even books sheathed in sleeves of white paper. It was an aesthetic I’d seen successfully carried out in magazines by artistic homeowners often living in New York City lofts with soaring factory windows. When we bought our first house in Toronto, we decided to live in the space for a few months before taking on a major renovation. The walls were a deep burgundy and the floors were a dark-stained, cheap parquet. Prior to moving in, I...

Kim Dawson worked tirelessly to turn a garish property into a serene home, ideal for a Scandi-style Christmas. When Kim Dawson first viewed a handsome Edwardian house in her dream location, she was unfazed by the multicoloured, dated interior, realising that with vision and determination, it could be totally transformed – just in time for Christmas. ‘I’m sure many people would have been put off by the riot of colour that confronted me when I walked in,’ says Kim. ‘The house was completely over the top, decorated in all colours of the rainbow dominated by yellows, reds and purples.’ Despite this...

Once a chaotic student house, Kibi Wright’s elegant home is now the perfect setting for peaceful celebrations with family and friends Call me Mother Christmas – it’s what I’m known as around here,’ says Kibi Wright as she welcomes you into her house on one of Bristol’s Georgian terraces. Candy pink and adorned with a silver wreath, the door stands out among its more sober neighbours. Inside, the festive theme continues with candles, garlands, baubles and a vertigo-inducing tree glowing with fairy lights in the elegant first-floor sitting room. When Kibi and her late husband Mark first viewed the house...

When Jenny Lilley and her fiancé Mark swapped town living for life in the country, they fell in love with a whole new interiors look. With its collection of antiques and classic palette, you would expect this Georgian cottage to be the home of a seasoned period property decorator, but that could not be further from the truth. ‘Although I grew up in the countryside,’ says Jenny Lilley, who is a lawyer, ‘my fiancé Mark and I lived in a modern flat in central Winchester before we came here in 2015. We filled that place with contemporary furniture that suited...