Want to find out how to elevate the décor of your home? Leanne Moore discovers the key ingredients required for a beautiful home from experts at the frontline.
Whether you’ve got a blank canvas or you’re adding to what you already have, these style-savvy retailers know how to make a room hit the right notes. Claudia Kozub (Indie Home), Erin O’Malley (Madder & Rouge) and Nyrelle Rowan (City Hall Store) have all created unique stores filled with well-considered collections of art, furniture, and designer pieces.
Their design stores are a direct reflection of their personal style and taste. These interior experts know first-hand the importance of an intentionally designed room. Through their work, they see the positive impact an immersive and inspiring space can have on people.
In this age of online shopping, going to a well-designed store where you can touch tactile textures, inhale an aromatic scent, and listen to a soothing soundtrack is an experience that has the feel-good factor. These experts share tips for creating a beautiful space.
Claudia Kozub of Indie Home
Store Style: Modern organic luxe — layered with texture and warmth.
Stylist Claudia Kozub co-founded Indie Home with her partner Neel Giri in 2013, blending her editorial background with a love of natural materials and soulful spaces. In 2023, she added the Interior Styling Studio by Claudia Kozub, expanding Indie Home’s offering to include holistic, design-led interiors.
What colours are you drawn to?
Layered whites, inky blacks, earthy neutrals and soft greys. There’s something timeless and grounding about these tones – they create a calm, textural base.
What is the key to a well-designed interior?
Start with a clear vision for your space. Take the time to think about how you want your home to look and feel, how each space will be used, and who will be using it. From there, create a sense of flow. That doesn’t mean everything needs to match – it’s about weaving in similar elements so that each room feels like part of a bigger story. I love a home that feels layered and interesting yet has an effortless sense of cohesion as you move through it.
What’s the secret to pulling a room together?
Layers and textures – always. And most importantly, choosing pieces you genuinely love. When everything in a room has been chosen with intention, it naturally comes together in a way that feels authentic and lived in.
Why do a lot of people find this a challenge?
People often think that colours and styles need to match. With white, for example, the more you layer, the more depth and interest you create. Variation adds warmth and dimension. Surround yourself with things that bring you joy; that’s what makes a home feel personal and real. My feeling is – if you love it, it belongs.
What’s the concept behind Indie Home?
I worked as a freelance magazine stylist for many of New Zealand’s top interior publications. I kept seeing beautiful pieces in overseas magazines that just weren’t available here. With my partner Neel’s background in sales and importing, and mine in styling and interiors, it felt like the perfect match – so we set out to create the kind of space we wished existed locally.
The concept was always to create a space that worked with and awakened all the senses. A layered environment filled with interesting textures, pieces you can mix and match, and a sense of calm. It’s not just about the furniture – it’s the way the store smells, the lighting, the music, the feeling you get when you walk through the door.
We design and make our own pieces, such as our New Zealand-made sofas and cushions, and we also collaborate with NZ artists whose work resonates with the Indie Home aesthetic – from large-scale photographic prints to original canvases and handcrafted objects.
What’s a beautiful room to you?
Beauty is such a personal thing – we all experience it differently. For me, a beautiful room feels open and calm, with plenty of natural light and space for the pieces to breathe. I’m drawn to high ceilings, layers of whites and neutrals, and tactile finishes like soft plastered walls and textured fabrics. I love the balance of new and old – mixed materials like stone and chrome sitting comfortably alongside weathered wood and soft organic lines.
I also love to bring the outdoors in. Adding beautiful, oversized foliage instantly adds a sense of life and movement to a room. It softens edges, connects the space to nature, and adds a living, breathing element.
I also find beauty in connection – knowing where each piece comes from, how it was made, and the story behind it. A room feels most beautiful when it carries intention and soul.
What do your clients at Interior Styling Studio want?
Most want a home that looks beautiful without losing that sense of comfort and warmth. They want spaces that feel lived in, not just styled. The good news is you can absolutely have both. It’s all about balance – and having the right guidance to bring it together.
Erin O’Malley of Madder & Rouge
Store Style: Confident, earthy and strongly textile-based
Erin imports beautiful fabrics and furniture from all over the world, a lot of it from France, hence the store name. She opened Madder & Rouge 23 years ago in Parnell, Auckland. In 2005, the store moved to its current site in Newmarket.
What’s the key to combining colour, pattern and texture?
Firstly, don’t be scared of it, and secondly start with what you love. I will often fall in love with a specific pattern and this will be my starting point. I choose a couple of block colours that are either present in the pattern or that work alongside it. This becomes the grounding layer that the pattern then settles into.
I love spaces filled with colour and texture. For me personally, the “pattern” aspect of my home lives in the art on my walls and in the books I have everywhere (so many books – but I can’t bear to get rid of them) and in my cushions.
I love to allow breathing room around the areas of energy I create in a space so that there is room for the people who enter it. A lot of interiors have so much going on visually, there is no place for the eye to land.
What’s your advice to someone who wants to introduce more colour, print and pattern to their home?
Start with your prep layer and then keep adding. Hunt for pieces that bring you joy. Don’t hurry the process. Allow each part of the room to build on itself. Think about the flow and work with the shape of the room. I love new mixed with old and, as I am “layering” a space, I am conscious of this balance. I often use a repetition of one colour to help the eye move around the room.
What do you believe finishes a room?
Fresh flowers. I love bunches of mixed roses – pink, yellow and red, all closely bunched together in a beautiful earthy vessel. And I love living with art. For me, it is like living with my friends. I have chosen works of art that I have connected with on some level.
How would you describe your interior style?
Madder & Rouge is really an extension of our home. It is filled with things I love: vintage kantha cloths, rugs, kilims, cushions, old Indian lassi cups, beldi glasses from Morocco. I like to think of Madder & Rouge as a place to come to breathe in colour and beauty and leave feeling uplifted and excited about your own space.
What’s a beautiful room to you?
When my eye travels around a room and is carried by a linking colour, repetition of a shape, design or material. When something that should be discordant lives comfortably in the space, adding the energy needed to lift the tonal key of the room.
Are you getting more confident, the more experience you get?
Absolutely, I do not find setting up a space a daunting task – I am energised by it.
Nyrelle Rowan of City Hall Store
Store style: Effortless and elevated. Timeless and easy
City Hall, which opened in Takapuna, Auckland, in 2022, is filled with well-designed pieces that make everyday life feel a bit more special. There are lots of earthy warm tones, such as browns, greens, rich deep reds and ochres – with surprising, unexpected pops of colour.
What does it take to create an interior that works?
I’m a big fan of natural fibres, beautifully-filled cushions, pieces that are well made, good-quality bed linen. Lots of textural layers. It’s the tactile experience that impacts how you feel in a space. Oh, and lamps. Lots and lots of lamps.
What’s the secret to creating a room that looks pulled together?
Not being afraid to go big. I love the impact of oversized prints and large rugs. I love generously sized cushions and furniture that fills a room in a confident way. I prefer the idea of fewer thoughtful elements, rather than filling a room with stuff that gathers dust.
Have you always had a strong sense of personal style?
I’ve always had a love for finding unusual things. In my 20s, I was an avid flea marketer and op shop hunter and I also found some pretty great treasures in the old inorganic collections. Some of these pieces meant so much to me that I even took them with me when I lived in Spain for a few years. It was so nice to have something with me that felt like home. I still have a few of these special pieces now and they work really beautifully with my more recent additions.
How would you describe your interior style?
Pretty relaxed, neutral and earthy with pops of colour. Pairing old with new. I like spaces that feel lived-in and reflect the people that live there, where everything has a purpose and a story. I’m super inspired by the clever way that Scandinavian design uses colour and space and mixes and matches pieces together harmoniously. I also admire the Japanese aesthetic; the calmness of the materials, the warmth of timber and the simplicity of the spatial design.
What’s the concept behind City Hall Store?
When I launched the store three years ago, I wanted to create a curated collection of pieces that reflect the way I like to live. City Hall is about helping people create homes that feel personal, welcoming and layered. We have larger pieces, like oversized prints, armchairs and rugs, but there are also some simple things, such as a really good peeler or salt and pepper grinders or the perfectly weighted Kinto mug. Everything here has been intentionally designed to make life better. It’s those small moments in the everyday that culminate to make a big difference in how you feel.
Are you getting more confident, the more experience you get?
I’m learning to trust my initial instinct and realising that in decision-making, if the first reaction isn’t yes, then the answer is probably no.
What’s a beautiful room to you?
Great light, a welcoming energy, lovely textures, but mostly it just feels homely, layered and inviting.
More on art, home and design
Celebrating creative minds and their spaces.
Painter Caz Novak’s beachfront Ōakura studio has inspired her for 27 years and counting. Caz Novak’s seaside studio in Ōakura inspires her vibrant, nature-themed paintings.
Interior design trends to bring home now, according to Copenhagen’s 3 Days of Design. Copenhagen’s design scene is ditching the gloss and going deeper – and NZ could follow.
Colour your world: Why designers are ditching neutrals and going bold. Forget 50 shades of beige. It’s time to decorate for joy – not just trends.
Blooming Gorgeous: Florists share their insider tricks to long-lasting flowers. Soak up these tips from the experts on how to arrange and maintain your beautiful blooms.
How an East Coast beekeeping couple turned a wooden cabin into a home. From a cabin on the East Coast, King Bees honey is bringing about a buzzy new era.