Inside Collette Dinnigan’s classically beautiful Sydney residence
The designer shares her tips for creating a harmonious home, effortless entertaining and her approach to collecting worldly treasures.
We are standing at the top of Collette Dinnigan’s Darling Point home in what was the roof and is now a beautiful white tongue-and-groove panelled bedroom. Dinnigan is surveying the epic view across the boats and yachts in Rushcutters Bay to the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge beyond. It is one of those wild, windy first days of spring.
Dinnigan’s Sydney home is a four-storey house in the heart of the harbourside suburb, situated on the ridge of the headland. For all the bright Snow White (Porter’s Paint) on its walls, the house feels like a warm hug, evoking a sense of intimacy and the feeling that discoveries will be made.
“One colour tends to bring it all together, and I always use white linens, sometimes pale greys together,” Dinnigan says.
“I suppose my colour tones are quite Belgian really. Blues, greys, whites and I like the artwork or the flowers to be the colour. Also, if there are lots of smaller rooms, to have them painted darker colours can look fantastic.”
Dinnigan is full of good ideas that work. This is not her first rodeo. When I ask her how many houses she has renovated, she pauses to think. “I don’t know, I feel like I’m always renovating, whether it’s been a shop or a shed,” she says. “Hmmm … I guess possibly 10 or 12, but honestly it feels like more.”
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Darling Point, as she refers to the house, is the latest in her arsenal. She bought it seven years ago, “for its sense of freedom and inspiration of being so close to the water and being up high … and all the palm trees, it feels so tropical”. She was also enticed by its “voyeur’s views of the harbour” and its position within Darling Point that she says as a suburb “still feels a bit sleepy, older, not overly modernised, with terracotta and shingle roofing everywhere”. The yacht club, too, is close by and she can easily walk to Paddington, where her namesake business first started with a boutique in William Street. “There are no shops here, which is nice, too. Although we are right in Sydney, it feels coastal. In the morning the kookaburras are here, the lorikeets and the parrots. It feels as if you could be on holiday.”
As any true Collette Dinnigan disciple will know, her entry into the antipodes was via a yacht her father built in the 1970s. The family sailed from Durban, South Africa, on Boxing Day in 1973, arriving at the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, more than a year later, following many adventures at sea. The journey has been an incredible inspiration throughout her life, knowingly and unconsciously. Her father, affectionately dubbed the last pirate, was an explorer, adventurer and craftsman. Her mother was a creative free spirit who taught Dinnigan the importance of simply being yourself with no regrets, of curiosity, and also imbued in her a lifelong love of animals and good cooking. Dinnigan says the family was considered “bohemian” back in ’70s Wellington. That adventure has helped fuel her life in fashion design and her own deep well of creativity, as well as her approach to business: one of fearlessness, great determination, and guts, of bold decisions and taking risks.
Her latest venture is a beautiful book, Bellissima, published by Simon and Schuster. It is a compendium of her many homes, travels and food, spanning Australia to Italy, with friends featured on the pages and some well-loved recipes shared. It is a lush tome, with linen cover and glossy pages, designed by the esteemed Vince Frost. The journey of the book began at Dinnigan’s kitchen table in Bowral, where many of her ventures begin. Photographer Earl Carter was on board throughout, capturing the earliest rays of a sunrise to moonrise. He journeyed with Dinnigan from Robertson in the Southern Highlands where she has a weatherboard home with a garden that looks out across the gorge to Budderoo National Park, to her historic country house in Puglia, dating back 500 years; an oasis in the heart of southeastern Italy.
Dinnigan has a tactile sixth sense when it comes to design. She has the blessing of “an eye”, that intuitive knack of just knowing what will work and a natural ability to edit and pick out the most beautiful items, whether it’s a battered antique doorknob, 40-millimetre hardwood, or simply selecting a super tone of Eau de Nil velvet.
As we move down through the house, we take in the bedrooms, each with its own incredible view and spacious bathroom, which she says is her weakness. “You must have good surfaces – try for recessed cabinets and plenty of space in a bathroom.” Many years ago she bought a container of Belgian white and grey marble that has gone on to provide floors and washstands for her homes, and which she says has become her trademark. In her son’s room, the slabs of marble, 35 millimetres thick, came from the old Hilton Hotel in Sydney and were recut and rehoned.
Dinnigan always finds a place for something. She goes the extra distance on spaciousness and with her choices of taps, showerheads, double marble sinks and assortment of impressive baths. She has amassed many of these items over the years and, as she moves from house to house, project to project, adds an extra depth, a repurposed patina, sense of poetry and storytelling, to the houses she transforms. She makes it look easy. Her trick, she says, is that she travels everywhere with a tape measure and really understands measurements. But, as anyone who has renovated knows, it is a long, frustrating and expensive journey to get to the finish line.
Although Dinnigan herself was the initial draftsperson for Darling Point, she worked with Chris Kokkinis from Ergo Architecture + Interiors.
“He put together my vision and he had some very practical solutions. He did things like insisting I excavate under the garage and put a light well in. And he was right, it has become almost its own wing where people like to stay as it has a lot of privacy.”
Major renovations to the house include levelling all ceilings and floors, replacing the windows and doors, moving the fireplace, excavating the cellar and basement to make way for a great laundry, library and bedroom with good wardrobe space and bathroom – all of which lead out to the pool. “I am very much about repurposing old timbers, and old lights, and using quality fittings on windows,” says Dinnigan. “These floorboards, I bought 10 years ago from an old sheep station near Perth, which I had remilled, and I think keeping them wide gives the house a solid, strong feel beneath your feet.”
The floorboards are throughout the house. She also spent a lot of time choosing the architraves and the cornices, which “give it the feeling of grandeur but is quite informal”. Glasses and ceramics are displayed in the glass-fronted cupboards.
“I feel like I’m always renovating, whether it’s been a shop or a shed ... Hmm, I guess possibly 10 or 12 [homes], but honestly it feels like more.” - Collette Dinnigan
Antique Pugliese floor tiles, chocolatey brown, mustard yellow and a bit of white, have played into the slight Spanish Mission feel – “and it works as it really feels like they > have been there forever”. Elegant narrow shutters from Egypt have been made into linen-press doors and many of the old bedroom doors have been stripped so that they’re simply timber. “They’re very solid, some are four or five inches thick, and when you close the doors, it’s soundproofed. That’s important – you need separation in a family house.”
We have arrived at the ground floor, where the airy living area opens out onto a deep wooden balcony. This entry level is the heart of the house, with its kitchen and dining area. Entertaining is what Dinnigan also does best of all, with a steady stream of close friends over for supper, a good bottle of wine open – nebbiolo preferably – while she cooks up a storm with vegetables from the kitchen garden in Bowral, and eggs from her chickens there. All the food, of course, is organic.
She is never daunted by anyone coming to dinner, from chefs such as Neil Perry, who features in the book cooking with her, to friends including artist Louise Olsen. Dinnigan was very close with Louise’s father, John Olsen, who painted many pictures for the family to mark the dinners and lunches they all enjoyed together. There is a recipe for his aioli in the book. Dinnigan’s husband Bradley is also very much part of the patina of making it happen, serving wicked negronis, with much laughter and soul, and oftentimes sharing hilarious conversation at the dinner table. The almost-square dining table is Danish and originally came from an old cheese factory; the round cheese outlines are still decipherable. Dinnigan bought it more than 20 years ago – if this table could talk … The silvery dining chairs, which she saved from the rubbish tip 23 years ago, are from an old palace that was being cleared out in Rajasthan. Above hangs a beautiful 19th-century chandelier, and as the sun is dropping, we light its candles. She has a thing for lights, especially tiny wonderful chandeliers with different coloured glass crystals. Every room has a standout piece, all different, which supports the informality of the luxury within the home.
“Of course, I have made mistakes,” she admits. “I should have put a lift in this house; in some properties I should have put in more bathrooms with each bedroom, as I really think people don’t like to share. Sometimes I’ve underestimated the cost of administration, of running a building site, the cost of engineers and hidden costs of things on the inside that you just don’t see.” She hopes that Bellissima will be a part of a mood board for people, not a how-to book, but an “Oh, what a great idea book” that inspires thoughts such as “I’ll mix that old and new together”.
Ultimately Dinnigan’s interior design DNA is all about creating spaces that are relaxed, happy, enchanting and bohemian, and the book, layered with illustrations and photographs, has been a way of capturing this.
“I think it has become a very personal kind of memoir, with my family heirloom recipes that have been passed down – and friends’ recipes that get passed across because we all love them. It’s been about sharing.”
Bellissima by Collette Dinnigan (Simon & Schuster Australia) is available now.
This story is from the November issue of WISH.
