Homestyle Magazine | Jun/Jul 2026
June/July 2026 Edition of one of New Zealand's favourite home design magazines.
"There’s a kind of luxury I’ve been thinking about recently, and it has nothing to do with excess. It came into focus during a conversation with Raimana Jones, director of Atelier Jones, about the Waterview kitchen on our cover: the value of designing for the home in front of you.
The duplex is given the full treatment, with each decision shaped around how the owners wanted to live. Raimana’s starting points were the afternoon light, the home’s character and a brief built from words such as quirky, fun, bold, comfortable and charming. This is where Made to Matter begins for me: design that makes a space richer, more useful and more personal. You can read the cover story on page 55.
That idea runs through the other homes here, too. Each reads the conditions closely, then makes a move. Mountains are held back by an introspective courtyard pause. A house wears its owners’ colours room by room. An alpine retreat lies low outside and comes alive within. Behind a fairytale stucco streetfront, an interior opens like a pop-up book.
Rachel Hooke and Brett Lunn’s house in Tāhuna/Queenstown by Condon Scott Architects, with interiors by Studio Noema, asks you to arrive through concrete, cedar and sky before offering the mountains. That reveal shapes daily life on page 62. In Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington, Sandra Preston and Arun Patel’s renovation with Spacecraft Architects and The Room Editor treats colour as part of how they live, not a layer added later. The house is vivid because they are. Meet them on page 76.
At the edge of Arrowtown, Mason & Wales and Lucy McBride Interiors shape a family retreat around a sheltered courtyard, balancing alpine exposure with domestic ease. The story continues on page 90. Back in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Rogan Nash Architects rework a Westmere bungalow for family life, keeping character and drawing the neighbouring reserve into the everyday. That reimagined plan is on page 102.
Seen together, these projects sharpen the point. A home gathers value when every move is shaped for the people in it. These are the decisions that make a place matter"