Interior brick vs modern feature walls.

Good designers are always inventing new ways to bring the outside in, and their latest innovation is to use materials more often seen on the outside, to provide visual cues inside. One thing's for sure though, they're not using brick!

While wallpaper has had a renaissance, and interior face brick is in decline, new, lower-cost-and-just-as-wow options are nipping at its heels. For example in the growing coastal town of Yanchep, just north of Perth, the Rural Building Company has created the Gnaraloo Retreat, on display in the Jindowie Estate.

General Manager Jay Walter says the home is designed to allow free-form living and with bi-fold doors at either end, opens up to act as one massive breezeway. However the home also features Scyon Matrix cladding on both the outside and the inside.

“It means you bring the external environment into the inside. In a sense, it could feel like the house is inside out,” Walter says. “We did the elevation with the Matrix cladding and it’s just a good product and we like it, so we thought why not bring it on the inside as well … to really create a design feature.”

Some walls would just be boringly blank

Walter says that because the home has a skillion roof, there are some walls that are very large and high and just blank without a feature.

“You can hang art or tapestries, but by doing this the wall has become an architectural feature itself,” he says.

“When people walk inside the home they absolutely love it as a feature. Lots of people say it’s inspired them and made them think twice about how they can use products.”

Limited only by imagination

Walter says that how you use products just depends on the imagination. You can paint them one colour or you can paint them many colours.

“They’re marketed as external products, but that doesn’t need to be their limit and we’re encouraging people to think outside the square,” he says.

Find out more about this trend in the Trend Report

You can read more about how lightweight exterior products have pushed both wallpaper and face brick off the inside wall - plus are adding texture to al fresco living areas - in the Trend Report in the Winter Issue of the Light Home magazine.