October 2005 finalist

From the Resene/Your Home and Garden Colour Home Awards Competition - Oct 2005 finalist

A bold shot of Resene ‘Bright Red’ has injected new life into this rumpus room, judged this month’s Your Home & Garden Resene Colour Home Awards winner

Once a lacklustre playroom that Jenny and Don Love’s daughters – aged 10 and 13 – had grown out of, this dramatic rumpus room is now a drawcard for family friends of all ages.

Dramatic red retro colour scheme.

Jenny’s inspiration for a retro look for this previously overlooked room in their 1960s home in Auckland came from two red hand-shaped ‘OK’ chairs from The Warehouse. Her paint choices flowed effortlessly from there, materialising in the pure tones of Resene ‘Bright Red’ along two walls, soothing cream Resene ‘Pearl Lusta’ to link the room to the adjoining rooms, and dark, defining Resene ‘Nero’ for the door architraves.

Jenny was keen to bring pattern into the picture so she hung retro James Dunlop ‘Jive’ fabric and turned the leftover fabric into two cushions to relate the pattern to the rest of the room.

Nothing is wasted in the crafty Love household! Jenny painted the canvas art, using books as the oblong templates and mixing Resene ‘Bright Red’ with varying amounts of Resene ‘Nero’ to create blocks of colour of different intensities. A white shelf was dismantled to create a television shelf and couch-side coffee table and the white cabinet and coffee table were picked up on www.trademe.co.nz. The red sofa bed came from Furniture City.

Jenny also decorated the Perspex panels that separate the room from the garage with stick-on black dots, as a safety measure that plays up the “funky, cool” look.

“It’s really quite funky and modern and, from a room that just wasn’t used, we now all just love being in there,” says Jenny.