Elystan: the house designed by Samantha Leigh in Brisbane, imagined by its owners from the pavement opposite

The story of the Elystan project began on the pavement opposite. For years, the owners would look across from their home at the tree-lined corner of New Farm, a slow accumulation of daily glances that eventually kindled the desire to make it their own. That distance, measured in quiet observation, became the foundation of their brief for Tim Stewart Architects and Samantha Leigh Interiors: a generous house organised around outdoor living, where the pool and garden would occupy the centre of domestic life and the architecture would find the gestures needed to dissolve the boundary between inside and out.

The project takes tropical brutalism as its base language. Exposed concrete defines the structure with formal authority: bare columns, carefully considered cantilevers, a massing that unfolds on site with conviction. A planted roof crowns the composition and folds it into the leafy fabric of the neighbourhood. On the ground floor, the façade opens to the garden through large operable planes that place the pool and lawn in direct continuity with the living spaces.

The interior works through a careful accumulation of materials with visible history. The tonal palette — terracotta, fallow, slate — runs through the house with consistency; each room receives the same materials at a different temperature. Oak appears in floors, ceilings and joinery with a warmth that tames the scale of the larger spaces. Concrete, present in the columns and transitional elements, maintains the connection with the exterior architecture and serves as the material anchor of the whole.

A living room open to the tropical garden

The main living room opens directly onto the tropical garden. Set against a mass of tree ferns, the wool bouclé sofa and raw timber trunk table offer a deliberate tactile register — surfaces that invite touch, that gather light and shadow with equal naturalness. Linen curtains in a camel tone manage the lateral opening of the space while preserving, at every moment, the relationship with the garden. The lighting, resolved with cylindrical black projectors recessed into the timber ceiling, accompanies the composition from above with discretion.

The dining room incorporates a large-format textile piece on the main wall. A natural fibre tapestry with linear trajectories that turns the background of the space into a field of active texture. The dark oak table and its accompanying chairs build an atmosphere of contained solidity. A high-backed chair, upholstered in terracotta printed fabric, brings singularity to the composition and reinforces the palette of the whole.

A kitchen with artisanal character

The kitchen chooses toasted oak to clad the floor-to-ceiling cabinet fronts, combined with a worktop and splashback in grey-green stone that introduces a chromatic freshness. The white mortar hood functions as a central sculptural element. Wooden stools with a brass detail complete a workspace that preserves the artisanal character of the whole.

The main bedroom constructs silence with the same attentiveness and care. Two layers of curtains — translucent linen and grey-brown velvet — orchestrate the entry of light with warmth. A circular-geometry rattan chair of generous scale occupies the corner by the window, turning that fragment of the room into a recognisable place of pause. The oak headboard and the concrete volume in the ceiling sustain the continuity of materials throughout the house.

The bathroom incorporates ceramic terracotta tiles, laid vertically, creating a surface texture of great presence. The worktop in rough-cut limestone — with the trace of the process preserved in the raw finish of its edge — is the piece that best distils the intention of the project: the material placed in the precise context that gives it meaning, with all its physical density intact.

Elystan is a house designed to be lived in with ease. Sophistication lies in the accumulated process of decisions — materials, proportions, pieces, scale — and in how those decisions quietly step aside when the inhabitants arrive, making room for life.

Project: Elystan.
Location: Brisbane (Australia).
Completed: 2025.
Interior design: Samantha Leigh Interiors.
Architecture: Tim Stewart Architects.
Styling: Jack Milenkovic.
Landscaping: Wild Studio.
Photography: Dave Wheeler.
Source: Samantha Leigh Interiors.

Samantha Leigh

Samantha Leigh studied interior design at the Enmore Design Centre in Sydney, where she trained between 2011 and 2015. In 2019 she founded her own studio in Brisbane, Samantha Leigh Interiors, through which she works on high-end residential projects, hospitality, and select commercial spaces.

The studio offers a comprehensive service spanning from initial concept to final styling, including bespoke furniture and lighting design. Samantha personally leads each project at the head of a specialist team, ensuring coherent creative direction and rigorous execution across every phase.

The studio’s aesthetic language is defined by each project, building its own narrative from the project’s specific characteristics and the context in which it unfolds. From that narrative foundation, the studio works with materiality and texture to compose spatial volumes with a distinct character, complemented by a selection of pieces — bespoke, collectible, contemporary or vintage — that add depth and singularity to the whole. Close collaboration with craftspeople and rigorous technical documentation are integral to the method that makes those results possible.

Project by Samantha Leigh