14th April 2021 / Prue Fletcher: At Home | with Ali Waight

At Home | with Ali Waight

Interior Stylist & Point Lonsdale local, Ali Waight, is part of the extended Fletchers family as a long-time client, entrusting Fletchers Bellarine Director, James Gladman, to look after all her property needs.

One of Melbourne's most talented creatives, stylist & interiors expert, Ali Waight, has always been a big dreamer but a small-town girl at heart.

A true contributor to her local community, Ali is a well-known business woman in the Geelong region, she has consecutively won the Geelong Business Awards three times and is named in the Geelong Business Awards Hall of Fame.

With more than a decade of design to her name, she became the weekly interiors columnist in the regions leading lifestyle magazine, the Geelong Advertiser GT Magazine, and has had a number of her Interior Design homes featured in national publications such as Home Beautiful. When she's not creating for her clients, she's been quietly chipping away at her own project, a modern Australian coastal home in the back streets of Point Lonsdale where she lives with her husband, three boys and two dogs, Ollie & Clyde.

When a real estate agent friend, Fletchers Bellarine Director James Gladman, let Ali know about the rundown beach shack going up for Auction on one of those 'dream streets', this boy-mum knew she'd found their forever home and quickly worked towards snapping it.

With her mind already designing a floorplan which catered for her family of growing boys, extended family, and regular drop-ins from all walks of life, an expansive white weatherboard was born and it's exactly what she dreamed of...

• What made your heart settle in Lonny? I grew up in the small town of Woodend. When I met my Ballarat-born husband in London and we moved back to Australia, I knew I wanted to raise a family in a similar small-town environment. My husband loves to surf, so Pt Lonsdale was the perfect compromise for us.
• What did you have in mind when setting out to build your family home? When we began thinking about building, I really found it difficult to process the demolition of the original house. It just didn't feel right, but there was nothing we could salvage, or build on, from the original kit-home. My aim then was to build something that looked like similar to the original beach houses of Pt Lonsdale. I've always had a love of white weatherboard homes, with a white picket fence.
• Describe your home for us now? My three boys will say it's white, white, white! I grew up in the country so I think it's a real mix of country and coastal. We have burnished concrete floors to take the rough and tumble (and sand!) of three boys and two dogs. The house is designed to take in the north facing aspect so we have lots of natural light. We also future-designed the house in two separate parts so that if the boys ever leave home, we can section their area off and make it a smaller home for two. It's surrounded by old Moonah trees and we live in a street by the back beach which has very few permanent residents so it's very quiet.
• How would you best describe your interiors style? My style is organic, neutral, and textured, rather than full of colour. I like a very calm and organised space and use tones of whites, greys and blues to create this. I love a coastal/country aesthetic. I love to decorate with family heirlooms, and things that tell a story or are special to me. I often find things at the beach or walking around and I'm constantly walking home with driftwood or old branches.
• I've often heard you say, 'build a room around a single piece of art'. I advise my clients to start decorating with a focal point like piece of art, or a floor rug, and build from there. It's then very easy to pull colours from art for cushions and accessories.
• What are some favourites you have hanging in your home? My favourite work is a very treasured Jennifer Riddle artwork that my friends gifted me for a special birthday. It reminds me of the landscape around Woodend, and my childhood, which is so special to me.
• Being in the industry and being exposed to so many new materials, did you find that challenging when it came to keeping your 'eyes on the prize'? Not really, I always knew I wanted to keep things quite classic. I'm not a big one for following trends. I work with a lot of new products and clients are often wanting what's 'on-trend', so I seem to get my fix at work. At home I like to keep things classic and timeless.
• What makes a home, home? Home for me is one hundred percent the people in it. We've lived in lots of different homes, tiny homes, homes needing repair - we even once lived in a former childcare centre - and we have fond memories across all of them. Home to us is somewhere to come back to, where you are loved, where you can recharge, where you feel safe. We're quite social too, so home to us is somewhere family and friends feel welcome and want to visit.
• Best investment you've made in the home? Definitely installing Hydronic heating, and the clothes drying cupboard. With three boys I couldn't imagine life without it!
• What's your favourite space? The main living area. It's an open plan kitchen, dining and living space. It faces north with large glass doors onto the decking, has a huge, pitched ceiling and an open fireplace, and it's where everything happens!
• What project are you working on at the moment? At the moment I've just installed some new joinery in the boy's bathroom and I'm changing up the tiles. I've also just finished a pergola on the deck to make it more usable all year round. To be honest, I'm always changing something up or moving furniture around - its lucky I have a very laid-back husband!

To connect with Ali head to her Instagram page at @aliwaightstylist
or check out her website at www.aliwaightstylist.com.au