House Tour
IN PICS | Relaxed family living can be really stylish — just look at this Cape home
Interior designer Lynne Harris-Whitfield's house in Oranjezicht combines considered space planning with lots of creative touches
Image: Elsa Young/Bureaux
Tucked away at the end of a panhandle in Cape Town's Oranjezicht — a neighbourhood well known for its attractive Victorian-era villas — interior designer Lynne Harris-Whitfield's home is set back from the road, behind a squad of square-pruned trees.
But the house soon reveals itself as something special, combining as it does a familiar sense of engaging Victorian poise with a different sense of scale: the building features a very untypical flat roof in its second-floor addition.
When Harris-Whitfield and her husband, Gavin, bought the house 13 years ago, it was a single-storey, three-bedroom cottage with good bones, good scale and an unusual double gable.
A week before they moved in, a fire gutted the interior, but they decided to turn adversity into advantage. So, they rebuilt, replacing many of the original period finishes (including floors, doors and fireplaces) with more contemporary versions.
Several years later — at which point the couple had two daughters and a son on the way — the family needed more space, but didn't want to move because they loved the location. They embarked on further alterations and additions, which resulted in two additional bedrooms for the girls on a new first floor, and generated both better flow and a more modern, user-friendly ground level.
Image: Elsa Young/Bureaux
Image: Elsa Young/Bureaux
Getting approval for the plans for the first-floor extension involved an application to the South African heritage council — and the latter turned out to prefer a contemporary profile for the rooftop addition rather than an imitative Victorian-style design.
The limited-edition nature of the original blueprints for the villas built in Cape Town during the last years of the 19th century meant, they said, that the roof profile should not be changed in a way that suggested it was a further version of those original designs, but rather should be done in a way that worked with the existing structure in a complementary way. The result is precisely this.
Harris-Whitfield's background in interior architecture, followed by stints as a design consultant and trend analyst for a fashion, food and lifestyle retail chain, gave her all the resources she needed to drive the design direction herself. She also knew the potential that could be unlocked from the property.
The aim was to update floor plans and use colour, carefully selected finishes, and contemporary design savvy to take it to the next level, while also retaining the original home's intrinsic character.
Image: Elsa Young/Bureaux
Image: Elsa Young/Bureaux
LHW Studio, Harris-Whitfield's interior design practice, is known for taking this approach to projects, and for the relaxed and easy-going spaces that it creates. “It's about getting the volumes and flow right, getting the junctions between spaces smooth, and getting the light right,” she says.
Easier said than done for most of us, but in her home, she's succeeded in doing so.
While much of the focus of the rebuild was on opening up the interiors and improving the flow between the kitchen, dining, living and outdoor areas, Harris-Whitfield says she is not a huge fan of completely open-plan living. Rather, it was important for her to find a middle point between expanding spaces and containing them too. “I like to use colour and material finishes almost as structural tools, to visually zone or link spaces where there are no actual physical links,” she says.
Asked about the home's distinctive yet understated palette of colours and textures, Harris-Whitfield says: “Key notes were a blackish burnt umber for metal finishes; white tones for marble and tiles; and a particular grey green eucalyptus colour, which I used for certain walls and all cabinetry on the ground floor.”
Image: Elsa Young/Bureaux
Image: Elsa Young/Bureaux
Image: Elsa Young/Bureaux
Image: Elsa Young/Bureaux
Image: Elsa Young/Bureaux