There is a word Carole Whiting’s clients reach for when they describe stepping into one of her spaces: calm. It is not something the Sydney-born, Melbourne-based designer consciously pursues. Instead, it’s the natural outcome of a practice grounded in restraint, honesty, and a true understanding of how people live.
Produced in partnership with Abode
Her own home says it best, ‘Blue House’ was a dilapidated heritage cottage (one of the oldest in South Melbourne) that has been carefully restored and extended, its original proportions respected and its bones preserved, while a new rear pavilion introduces pitched ceilings, expansive glazing, and a connection to the garden Whiting has come to love through the seasons.
The two homes’ two halves hold a soft dialogue: dark and intimate at the front, open and light-filled at the rear. “You enter the house through the blue front door into the heritage part, the rooms are smaller, the space more intimate and enclosed,” she explains. “And then as you navigate through into the more contemporary space, it’s volume and light and contemporary living.”
Threading it all together is a recurring geometry of checks, grids, and squares that moves from checkerboard tiles to gingham wallpaper to the enveloping grey of the reinstated staircase. The final layer is textile. Abode’s bed linens, cushions, throws, and towels are woven through the home with the same considered ease that defines every other material decision in Whiting’s home; premium, pared-back, and completely at home against linen, dolomite, and warm timber. For Whiting, bedding is never incidental. “I’m the queen of layering up beds,” she says. “Lots of different sheets, blankets, textures and that’s where the textiles are so important, because they’re right next to your skin. You’re actually in the middle of it.”
After all, this is a home made for long weekends and slow mornings and a place to breathe. “It’s not just about how a house looks,” Whiting reflects. “It’s about how it feels.”
An Agape Ottocento bath sits against a backdrop of the same checkerboard stone tile used throughout the home. The Pittella Up+ floor-standing bathtub mixer and hand shower in matt white rises beside it, while a Zanat timber side table from K5 holds a candle and soap within easy reach.
A window seat frames a garden outlook from the rear pavilion, its chunky rendered surround echoing the home’s recurring geometry of squares. A De La Espada Bench With Back and a Nikari April side table from K5 sit to one side, a Michael Anastassiades ceramic pendant light suspended above.
The primary suite centres on a De La Espada Companions bed, its slatted timber headboard framing layers of Abode bed linen—Citi sheeting in Lino, the Treviso quilt cover in Biscotti, and the Faro coverlet in White—finished with the Torres cover in Grey draped at the foot. A Produzione Privata Festina pendant light hangs to one side.
