They say working for yourself can be hard, but more than anything it can be time consuming. With so many ideas and possibilities swimming around in your head, how can anything ever be narrowed down? Interior designer Ruby Shields has taken seven years to complete her beautiful home in the hills, creating a remarkable example of colour-drenched interior design and a highly personal approach to Australian residential interiors.
Ruby Shields and partner Patrick Shields of Studio Shields seem to be in a constant state of experimentation. There are many ways to be creative, but for this team it’s about layering, using materials unexpectedly or in tandem with something else. Their incredible home amongst the trees in The Dandenongs has allowed them to explore the possibilities – allowing some ideas to stew, while others boiled and overflowed. When it’s your own home and time, not everything has to work first time or even at all. Colours or fabrications can miss, but in the process can spark new ideas or solutions.
From the creative ashes, rises a beautiful kitchen with brass kickers or a study ceiling with whimsical, hand-painted filigree. It’s all there in the experimentation that ultimately reveals an extraordinary talent to curate and control colour and form. Whether a story of their own or through their extensive collection of art, furniture and objects, The View is a deeply personal response and the only way it could have been done.
“There was a lot of testing, trialling and rethinking. Some things stayed, others were completely reworked, but rather than treating colour as something applied at the end, it became part of the architecture," remembers Ruby. “The palette wasn’t decided upfront, it revealed itself over time. We lived in the house, watched how the light moved, how the landscape shifted through seasons, all of that shaped the way colour was introduced.”
Ruby's impactful designs stem from a thoughtful approach to colour palettes, custom joinery, and material selection, making Laminex an ideal medium for bringing colour into the architecture of the home.
“Because it’s Australian made and widely available, it removes a layer of limitation. It means you can focus on composition, proportion and colour relationships, rather than getting caught up in sourcing something rare or unattainable,” explains Ruby, “The result is something that gives character and warmth to the home – and like most of the handmade elements in the house it added another layer.”
If there is a theme to The View, it’s more of an overarching one; layers. Ruby has been collecting pieces and working with Australian artists or makers for years. Having found their way their way into her heart, finding their way into the house is the next step, but acknowledges that nothing is ever set in concrete. Pieces move, shift and find new places over time, what’s important is to have a base as those colours and materials can be leaned into and provide the perfect backdrop.
Amongst it all, Laminex French Navy and Laminex Moroccan Clay have found their place, demonstrating how the Laminex Colour Collection can be used to create sophisticated, layered interiors. In the bedrooms, living and bathrooms, Laminex French Navy is exactly as Ruby explains, a backdrop to wonderful inclusions, textures and decoration, and genuinely part of the whole. Custom brass handles – “Tactile” by Patrick Shields – twist and distort to mimic the leaves outside.
Each is gently different, a result of Patrick's handwork, but bring a textural quality hard to achieve any other way. The warmth of brass is met by a handcrafted timber bed, a low hanging chandelier of organically shaped glass, a vintage leather chair – layers upon layers carefully considered works create the scene. The wall is a burnt ochre with metallic gold skirting, hanging in its centre is a patchwork quilt while overhead plywood panels form the ceiling before blending into a pelmet and views of the canopy beyond.
“I think what this project displays, overall is that it’s not how much you can spend, it’s how you use materials that makes it feel so different,” says Ruby of her home and approach to interiors.
Ruby chose Laminex Moroccan Clay as the foundation of the kitchen joinery, showcasing how colour can elevate custom cabinetry and kitchen design while creating warmth and character. Laminex Brushed Brass complements this in the kickers. The same “Tactile” brass handles of the bedroom have been used in the kitchen, this time in a more earthy, tonal application. Reclaimed timber brings patina and variation to the island, galley bench tops and floors. A butler’s pantry continues the materiality, but like everything else in the home, has been interpreted in its own particular way, the handcraft delightfully evident.
“We wanted the kitchen to really hold itself, because we spend so much time in there and because it is essentially the heart of the home, so using the Laminex Colour Collection it has the versatility to mingle with all the other colours we have throughout the house. Bringing in those greens and the electric blue ceiling. The Moroccan Clay really was the rich loam that transcends the whole space.”
Ruby and Patrick Shields’s home is part gallery, workshop and lounge. It is as much a warm hug as it is a chance to peak into someone’s mindset and approach to design. In doing so Ruby has demonstrated how important it is to find your own way, to experiment and let the colours or your pieces find their place.
“The Laminex Colour Collection allows colour to move beyond paint - bringing it into joinery and built elements – to give it more presence, it becomes part of the structure of the space rather than something layered on top. I use it because it’s reliable and versatile, but also because the colour range allows for a lot of flexibility. Working in a colour-drenched way, you’re not just picking one colour, you’re building a sequence of tones that need to sit together without feeling disjointed.”
Never has the phrase ‘greater than the sum of its parts’ felt more apt. Two years became seven, but in that time the home became a place to experiment and of finding out who they were as makers and designers.
“Someone recently called me a stylised hoarder - seems very fitting,” laughs Ruby, “It just has so many intricate things that are just really special and relate to us, and I guess that’s why it resonates with everyone because it is so personal.”
Time to start experimenting.
Order samples from The View below, or learn more about Studio Shields on their website.
Credits:
Design: Studio Shields
Carpentry & Joinery: Patrick Shields
Styling: Jessica Alice & Studio Shields
Photographer: Martina Gemmola
Video: The Local Project
Banner image features Laminex Moroccan Clay kitchen cabinetry and Laminex Brushed Brass kickers within Ruby's layered, eclectic home.
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