When people think about interior design in Melbourne, the first thing that usually comes to mind is how a home looks. The kitchen colour, the tiles, the stone, the lighting and all of those beautiful finished details. And yes, aesthetics are obviously a big part of what we do. I want your home to look great. But interior design is about so much more than creating a pretty picture.

It’s about how your home actually works for you.

For us, interior design is generally everything that’s fixed to the house. It’s your flooring, tiles, carpet, lighting, fixtures and fittings. It’s your kitchen, bathrooms, laundry and custom joinery. These are the permanent decisions that shape how you move through and use your home every single day.

Decoration comes later. That’s your furniture, rugs, window furnishings, artwork and the other layers we bring into the home.

If you’re planning a renovation, our interior design services take you through this entire process, from understanding how you need your home to function through to developing the colour, materials and details that make it feel like yours.

A kitchen needs to do more than look good

When we’re designing a kitchen, I’m not just thinking about the cabinetry colour.

I want to know how you actually use the space. Do you cook every night? Do you entertain? Does everyone end up standing around the island when friends come over? Do you need somewhere to hide the toaster, coffee machine and appliances that currently live on the bench top?

We’re thinking about storage, drawer organisation, task lighting, bench space, appliance locations and how you naturally move around the room.

These might not be the things you notice when you save a beautiful kitchen on Pinterest, but they’re the things you’ll notice every day when you live with it.

A kitchen can photograph beautifully and still be incredibly annoying to use. Good interior design needs to do both.

Bathrooms are about the everyday details

Bathrooms are another room where it’s very easy to get distracted by the finishes.

You’ve fallen in love with a tile. You’ve saved the vanity. You’ve found the tapware. Great. But before we get there, we need to make sure the room actually works.

Where are you storing everything you use each morning? Is there enough bench space? Do we need a shaving cabinet? Where are the power points? Is the lighting going to work when you’re standing in front of the mirror?

Because I don’t want to design you a bathroom that looks incredible on installation day but frustrates you six months later because there’s nowhere to hang your towel.

Don’t forget about the laundry

The laundry isn’t usually the room people are most excited about when we start designing a home, but it’s one of the hardest-working spaces.

Where does the washing get sorted? Where do you hang clothes that can’t go into the dryer? Where does the laundry basket live? What about the vacuum, mop, ironing board and cleaning products?

Hanging rails, pull-out hampers, tall cupboards and enough bench space for folding might not be particularly exciting design decisions, but getting them right can make your everyday routine so much easier.

Custom joinery should have a purpose

I love custom joinery, but I don’t think we should add cabinetry to a room simply because there’s a blank wall. It should solve something.

Maybe it’s a living room unit that houses the television while giving you somewhere to display your books, artwork and things you’ve collected while travelling. Maybe it’s an entry unit that finally gives shoes, bags and keys somewhere to go. Or perhaps it’s a wardrobe designed around the clothes you actually own rather than giving you a generic combination of shelves and hanging rails.

That’s the benefit of designing something specifically for your home.

Good interior design starts with asking questions

This is why our design process doesn’t begin with me immediately showing you a colour palette.

At Nikki Weedon Interiors, we send our clients a detailed questionnaire because I want to understand how you actually live.

What works in your current home? What drives you mad? How do you entertain? What do you own? What needs to be stored? Who uses each room? What are the little things you deal with every day that you’d love your new home to solve?

You don’t need to know the design solution. That’s our job.

Once we understand how the home needs to function, we can start building the bigger story around it. The colour, materials, cabinetry, stone, lighting and all of those details that give your home its personality.

A beautiful home that doesn’t work isn’t good interior design

Of course I care about how your home looks. I love colour, pattern, materials, custom details and creating homes with personality. But those decisions need to work alongside something much more important: how you want to live in your home.

Because you’re not designing your home for the photograph taken at the end of the project.

You’re designing it for everything that happens afterwards. The morning coffee. Cooking dinner. Friends standing around the kitchen. Getting ready in the morning. Putting the washing away. Sitting on the sofa at the end of the day. That’s the part of interior design you don’t necessarily see in the finished photographs, but it’s the part you’ll experience every day.

If you’d like to see how we bring function, colour and personality together, explore our Melbourne interior design projects.

And if you’re planning a renovation and want to create a home that works for the way you actually live, get in touch and tell us about your project.