Nicole Hollis and her partner and husband Lewis Heathcote renovated their vacation home in Hawaii as a quiet escape from the city during the pandemic. It was an otherworldly place for the designer couple. This three-bedroom holiday home has a balcony with a view that provides a flowing platform between inside and outside.

Hollis designed a high-contrast palette of bright grey and dark grey, using bleached and blackened wood, replacing the cream and orange colour scheme. She wanted a calm, relaxed feeling without too much decoration, so she used lots of tiles in all the places, as well as lots of different styles, decorations and wall lamps.

To highlight the textures of various materials, she added bleached reclaimed teak flooring, pale white oak doors and warm grey lime stuccoed walls. Then she brought in a kind of natural, plain furniture. The great room has a linen sofa made by a Belgian company, a black oak Beam coffee table, vintage French cane chairs and a hand-woven jute rug.