Plantasia: Surreal Family Retreat Drenched in Botanical Color Tones
Plantasia unfolds as a cinematic holiday house in Australia, conceived by YSG Studio for a young family seeking escape from city routine. The fictional retreat turns a cavernous 1990s mock-Colonial shell into a lush interior journey, where cork floors, wallpapers and surreal colour drench every corner. Each room carries its own mood, inviting children and adults to wander, linger and discover small scenes threaded through the home.
Cork floors soften each step as the light shifts across citrus gardens outside. Inside, colour floods the walls and ceilings, pulling the eye toward one more room and then another.
This house sits on the New South Wales coast as a family holiday retreat by YSG Studio, reshaping a once neutral 1990s mock-Colonial shell into an exuberant interior landscape. The project centers on immersive palettes and objects that push everyday rituals toward play, from patterned ceilings to upholstered ottomans and teddy bear-like armchairs. Every room builds a different chapter, yet the palette threads them together with a clear, almost cinematic rhythm.
Originally, the house read as a cavernous volume painted in cautious whites, its colonial references dulled by uniform surfaces. YSG Studio retains the underlying bones yet rejects new internal walls, instead using colour, pattern and furniture to visually resize each room for daily life. Bathrooms and kitchen are stripped back to their shells, then rebuilt around sensual materials and saturated tones that tune the mood from parlour to powder room.
Welcoming With Colour
The visit starts at an entry vestibule anchored by an oversized timber door painted butter yellow. A tubular brass pull by V.Brokkr sits on a decorative stone plate like jewelry, giving the first tactile cue that this is a house for escape rather than routine. Opposite, a radiating yellow-framed mirror doubles the glow and gently disorients, setting up the idea of a portal before anyone even steps into the parlour.
That parlour leans into Victoriana: floral wallpaper wraps the walls, a circular velvet ottoman with a skirt centers the room, and carved joinery turns storage into stage set. Colour here isn’t loud for its own sake; it suspends time long enough for visitors to adjust, even as a Wes Anderson-like jolt keeps the scene from feeling polite. Across the floor, a dark cork hourglass motif runs from entry through hall to kitchen and dining, a graphic thread that quietly binds the journey.
Living Rooms In Motion
In the lounge, curved lines steer movement and soften the once rigid envelope. A custom timber table echoes elongated arches added between dining room and sleeping quarters, while an overhead “crown” of oversized pearls turns functional lighting into floating sculpture. Along one wall, a walnut credenza with a melted chocolate-like surface and Malteser-like pulls deepens the room’s edge, turning what was a flat plane into a layered storage and display zone.
Timber joinery climbs to frame wallpaper, rising above low storage and the high datum behind nubby banquette seating so pattern reads as part of the architecture. Striped ceilings and seating, plus hand-painted squares on the lounge ceiling, insert a gentle tension against the home’s organic curves. Patterned fabrics in small doses keep that rhythm going without crowding the room.
Kitchen And Baths As Theatre
The kitchen tucks drama into the details rather than shouting across the room. Above a maroon glass mosaic kicker, an amoebic timber island seems to float, its soft outline picked up by vintage rattan stools that link timber and tile through woven texture. Heavily mottled Rosso Asiago marble tops introduce earthy reds and terracotta, extending the sunset spectrum that balances the lounge’s sage foliage.
In the bathrooms, colour and material take on almost storybook intensity. A verdant powder room carved from thick green onyx uses bullnose edges in exaggerated form, turning every corner into a softened touchpoint. Nearby, the main bathroom pairs a rounded sherbet yellow Rockwell tub with a canopy of citrus fruit motifs and shimmering gridded tiles, so bathing feels staged under a playful, zesty ceiling.
Dining And Sleeping Worlds
The dining room reads as a communal cabinet of curiosities. A farmhouse-style timber table sits at the center, ringed by mismatched chairs from rustic rush-seated vintage pieces to classic Thonets, evoking fable-like Goldilocks moments. Above, a salon hang of miscellaneous treasures climbs the wall, while inset shelving lined in glass mosaics and Zellige tiles glints beside the table.
Bedrooms shift the mood toward darker, cinematic tones suited to night. Walls and ceilings carry merlot red, violet and absinthe green, with one room’s ceiling wrapped in a field of Hollyhocks to keep nature present even in sleep. The master suite leans into autumnal foliage wallpaper, blue carpet underfoot and striped ceilings overhead, pulling the gaze out toward dense trees beyond the windows. A large painting above the bed hints at shared secrets, leaving the narrative open for each guest.
In the end, Plantasia turns a once generic house into a layered interior adventure. Cork, wallpaper, marble and onyx ground the colour story in tangible texture and weight. Light catches patterned ceilings and glossy tiles, shifting through the day as families move between dining table, tub and lounge, always finding one more room to explore.
Photography by Felicity Ng
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