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From the Resene/Your Home and Garden Colour Home Awards Competition - Second finalist

2017/2018

A beautiful family home opens its doors to international travellers who connect with its thoughtfully chosen palette.

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A creative Whanganui couple have turned their house into a boutique bed and breakfast, where European guests are often surprised to find colours that remind them of home.

Jenny Brown says her training as a textile designer affirmed her love of colour, and describes her husband Peter, who toyed with architecture before training as a lawyer, as very creative. “He’s the detailist and I’m the colourist,” she says.

Greeting guests on arrival in the entrance hall is Resene Bittersweet with joinery in Resene Quarter Pearl Lusta. A Dutch guest was so taken with the colour, she returned to the Netherlands with a sample.

Resene Bittersweet was chosen to brighten up the hall and provide a backdrop to the textiles – “A few of my mother’s pieces from her travels on the Silk Road,” says Jenny.

The very first guests to the bed and breakfast were Danish and fell for the Resene Karen Walker Smoky Green in the River Room. “They said what lovely Scandinavian colours we had used – others have said the same thing. It’s a wonderfully complex colour that, depending upon the light, can be green or blue or grey,” says Jenny.