Project Feature | Blackstone Estate

Can you share a little bit about who you are and what led you to design this family home?

I’m the founder of Nalu Studio, a boutique architecture practice based in Byron Bay. Before returning to Australia, I spent 15 years delivering high-end residential projects for clients in New York and London.
This project became an opportunity to create something deeply personal. The house was conceived as the first stage of a multi-generational family estate. A property grounded in the rituals of daily life, connected to landscape, and designed to evolve over time. The project also marked a return home in many ways. Coming back to the Byron hinterland shifted my perspective around luxury. It became less about formality or excess, and more about composure, material honesty, light, and a sense of belonging to place.

Having known this land for a long time, how did the landscape of the Byron Bay hinterlands influence your design choices and the way the build is integrated on site?

Having spent time in the original cottage over the past 10 years, I've learnt that resilience out here is non-negotiable. Embracing Mother Nature's wild ways, rather than fighting them. So the home is strong in form, but with a warm and welcoming spirit once you cross that threshold to the interior.

Materials were chosen for the way they weather and settle into the landscape over time. The palette is intentionally restrained so the focus remains on the surrounding hinterland and panoramic ocean views. In this part of Byron, homes are often seen from a distance across ridgelines and through the trees, so it was important the architecture felt embedded within the landscape rather than dominating it.

How did you want the home to feel day-to-day for your family?

In a word, unpretentious. I wanted it to feel refined yet lived-in. While the home was carefully detailed, there was never an intention for it to feel overly formal or precious. The home was designed to hold both large gatherings and moments of introspective solitude equally well.

As an Architect, why was it critical to integrate lighting into the early structural phases, and how did your choice of both architectural and decorative fixtures help define the home’s atmosphere?

Lighting was considered from the earliest stages because it fundamentally shapes how architecture is perceived. Collaborating with Lighting Collective from the outset was invaluable, allowing me to adjust the lighting scheme according to their expert advice. Many of the lighting details are intentionally quiet and concealed. Recessed architectural lighting was carefully coordinated within the bespoke joinery to illuminate specific objects or pathways throughout the home.

Decorative fixtures - such as the Organic Sculpted Wall Sconce and Dusked Evo & Eos Wall Lights - were approached more like objets d'art, introducing warmth, tactility, and intimacy at a human scale.

Sconces and uplights were also key to the overall lighting scheme, particularly in the snug with its double-height gabled ceilings. We have eight high-level uplights on dimmers that illuminate the exposed timber rafters and cast a subtle glow over the entire gathering space.

Architects often say that light is what makes materials “speak.” In this project, how was the lighting designed to interact with your material palette to create a specific sensory atmosphere throughout the day and night?

The material palette was intentionally tactile and subdued, so light could become the element that brings depth and variation to the spaces.
Throughout the day, natural light moves across textured surfaces, rough-sawn timber grain, distressed travertine, limewash, and soft linens. At night, the lighting becomes much more selective and layered. Rather than uniformly illuminating rooms, we focused on creating pockets of warmth and contrast.
There’s also a strong emphasis on indirect lighting throughout the home, allowing evenings to feel serene and restorative rather than overly bright or clinical.

What is your favourite moment in the home throughout the day?

Watching the sunrise over the ocean would be the obvious answer!
But I have to say that late afternoon in late autumn/winter is probably the most special moment. The hinterland has a very particular softness at that time of day. The sun sets behind the ridgeline at the rear of the property which casts the most spectacular, subdued light right onto the rolling hillside, ocean and our veggie gardens below. Around that time, the sconces and lamps get switched on, the fireplace lights up, and there’s a brief window when the quiet glow inside the home mirrors that of the landscape outside. Observing that rhythm from the snug is pretty hard to beat.

Looking back, are there design choices you’re most proud of from this project?

Every time the house is filled with friends and family slowing down, gathering around the kitchen, opening the house to the landscape, it feels like the architecture is doing exactly what it was intended to do.
Beyond the materials, lighting and detailing, the project was really about creating a grounded and enduring backdrop for everyday living.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Nuria Palat

LIGHTING DESIGN

Lighting Collective