Our client was drawn to the fundamentally simple and beautiful homes of John Pawson as inspiration. Use of colour was not on the agenda, so instead we focused on the interplay of texture, combining hard and soft finishes and contrasting matt and gloss surfaces to create intrigue and depth in an otherwise monochromatic palette. These quiet juxtapositions were an exercise in restraint. It is what has been left out that makes the interior special. Existing sandstone walls which were revealed during demo and swiftly adapted into the scheme, working perfectly with the selected oak timber floors and soft whites of the new walls and joinery. The house was previously starved of natural light, and is now abundantly filled. The house desperately needed a solution to improve its spatial flow and harness natural light. We opened up the ground floor, pushed the external wall out to the boundary and converted what was a dark and unused side passage into the dining area with a 4m long skylight overhead. The approach was to create a more functional floor plan, and pull natural light through the space.