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Bianca is a photographer and who lives in Dunsborough with her husband, son and pet dog. Over the last couple of months we have become good friends and, when i asked, she happily let me enter her home to photograph it. I love Bianca’s home. It is light and fresh, yet at the same time emits a warmth makes you smile – a bit like Bianca herself, actually.
Rather than buying or building a new house, Bianca and her husband decided to renovate an existing property, nestled among the tall trees in old Dunsborough. “We liked the fact that our house had a story long before we moved in, and that we would be able to add to it and grow with it over the coming years”, Bianca says.
Bianca’s favourite thing about their home is that it “is light and airy and that you can see bush through all our windows.” She also loves the fact that they are so close to town, so on the weekends they can walk or ride their bikes.
Bianca has some lovely pieces in her home, and confesses to being a little obsessed with cushions. “I’ve always loved homewares, and yes, I have a cushion addiction!” Bianca has collected many of the things she owns from their travels around Australia and overseas, so they all have special meaning. Her background in interior design has meant that she is “always inspired by creative spaces” and “loves to play around with the items we have at home.”
There is a variety of lovely art pieces gracing the walls of Bianca’s home. Bianca says she loves art and began collected it at a young age. “My parents always collected beautiful artwork, so I guess they inspired me.” I love how all the pieces have little stories about where they are from. The painting hanging above Oscar’s cot was an engagement present from Bianca’s brother from Peru. The piece by the bottom of the stairs, created by Ian Dickinson of the Australian landscape, was a birthday gift. For Christmas she received the “Mother & Son” painting by Margaret River artist Rebecca Cool. “This is so special to me as it’s a reflection of my relationship with Oscar”.
Bianca says she is drawn to blue and green things, and loves to add a splash of pink into the mix.
The piece that Bianca holds most dear, however, is the metal plaque of the Virgin Mary that belonged to her grandmother. Bianca says that her grandmother “carried it with her through the Second World War, where she, as a Ukrainian woman was escaping from the Nazi regime. The plaque has stayed with her virtually her whole life and was one of her most favourite posessions, which she carried with her at all times. She gave it to me in my last teens as a gift, perhaps the most important item that I own”
Bianca says that her appreciation of the arts and the world around her has been the biggest influence on the renovation of their home. She describes their home as “light, white and fresh” and hopes that, if someone were to look ‘into her window’, that they would feel calm and refreshed, as “that’s the way our home makes me feel”.
To Bianca, what makes her house a home are her husband Dion, their Son Oscar and Kirra, the family dog. “We have beautiful things in our house, but at the end of the day they are just that, things. It’s the people in your life that make a house a home – they allow you to cherish all the special things you have”
Bianca, I could not have said it better myself – thank you so much for letting me ‘into your window’!