The Raggedy Ridge House at Ophir in Central Otago is featured in a new book, New Zealand Rustic, creating a home inspired by nature. Photo / Brent Darby
Māhia farmer Malcolm Rough has commissioned a new book featuring New Zealand rustic homes after spending 30 years restoring his villa. Creating a comfortable and welcoming home isn’t dependent on a big budget, writes the book’s editor Kate Coughlan.
Why do some homes feel right when you walk into them? What makes one house feel welcoming while another not?
I’ve been into hundreds of homes throughout New Zealand, this country, and overseas, during my career editing magazines devoted to homes and interiors, and I’ve pored over photographs of countless more. I wasn’t looking critically to assess quality or make a judgment about “good taste” but to see, from a photography perspective, whether the home would look great presented in a magazine.
Over time, I recognised that how people feel when they walk through the front door of a home has little to do with the decor budget. A house has material dimensions, for sure, but its most powerful appeal to us is when it makes us feel safe and sheltered.
Presenting a home is a lot like how people look each other in the eye when shaking hands. It is about establishing a sense of trust, of one person feeling they are beginning to know another person through the cues their home gives. Paired with a warm invitation to a comfortable chair or sofa, and happy relationships begin to flourish.
This is why home staging is a useful tool when selling a home; prospective buyers don’t want to get to know the departing homeowners. Instead, a potential purchaser wants to imagine their personality filling the space.
An unstaged home speaks volumes. Is it messy and disorganised; brightly coloured with quirky elements; is it minimalist with cool lines and only hints of individuality; is it orderly, well-maintained?
Mahia farmer Malcolm Rough developed an interest in rustic-inspired home decor after he and his family spent more than three decades restoring a dilapidated villa overlooking the coast south of Gisborne. Rereading a book about Scandi interior decor for the fourth time, he wondered why the book intrigued him.
“It made me ask why I loved my home so much, and why I’d done what I did with the decor. I started to get excited about what else I could do,” Rough says. “Was there a New Zealand version of the Scandi rustic theme? Was there a unique New Zealand approach to this style which captured aspects of our country more faithfully than an imported decorating approach?”
He commissioned a small team (including me as the writer, and my former colleagues from NZ House & Garden and NZ Life & Leisure, art director Yolanta Woldendorp and photographer Tessa Chrisp) to produce a book demonstrating New Zealanders’ approach to creating a rustic-inspired home. The book New Zealand Rustic: Creating a Home Inspired by Nature is the result.
“It is a rich journey,” Rough says of the many months he spent working intensely with Woldendorp to find appropriate homes to bring his vision into life.
“I learned that budget has little to do with creating a home that is good for the soul. I was adamant that these homes not be overly styled but as we live in them. In some cases, they are decorated with treasures that have been with the owners for decades, happily moving house several times.”
Rough’s resulting handsome coffee-table book features six New Zealand homes, epitomising a unique response to the immediate New Zealand landscape. It also includes chapters with practical how-to tips on lighting, textures, colours, styling, and the use of natural light and air.
In the past few decades, rustic decor has become commonplace in high-end lodges in remote areas offering guests a connection with nature.
That connection with nature has been popular with generations of Kiwis who left their everyday homes and jobs to retreat to the bach, crib or humble holiday home in the bush or near the beach.
Furniture was often recycled from the “Aunty Peggy’s old sofa” school-of-decor. Kitchen cupboards were home to wobbly piles of mismatched plates, bedrooms housed bunks, rollaway beds or a grandparent’s old (ridiculously narrow) double bed.
Flower arrangements were as likely roadside weeds, collected and artfully arranged in whatever jam jar had been emptied that week, as florist bouquets. This century’s grander, and no doubt more comfortable, holiday homes provide more of a “Remuera on sea” experience and are decorated in accordance.
Perhaps that loss of connection with a simple style of life is why the décor style known as Scandi Rustic style has developed an enthusiastic following with its controlled colour palette, plentiful use of timber features and natural materials, and the home’s connection to the natural world.
The planetary cost of new building materials, not to mention the dollar cost, encourages a growing interest in doing things differently with a reuse-where-possible mindset, whether new builds are modest or large. A pride in upcycled or found items suits the ethos of the times.
Rough says the rustic style is unique from home to home.
“It is not a “look” developed all at once on a decorator’s notepad. A rustic home does not get created from scratch in one go; it doesn’t arrive on a delivery truck by the houseload. It is a collection of loved objects, things that are meaningful, that have a story. It evolves through life with the person; it ages, it gathers richness with time.”
New Zealand Rustic: Creating a Home Inspired by Nature, Rough & Co Publishing, $59.99
– Kate Coughlan is a former editor of NZ House & Garden and NZ Life & Leisure.
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