Undercover Architect

Helping homeowners get it right when designing, building or renovating their family home.

Navigating Interior Design and Other Project Choices for a New Build, with Jan and Landon

When building a new home, there can be so much to navigate, especially as you move towards Interior Design selections and other project choices.

Join HOME Method members, Jan and Landon, as they share their experience navigating interior selections, Passive House choices, and stormwater challenges in their new build.

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 368, and it’s Part 2 of my conversation with HOME Method members, Jan and Landon, who are currently building a passive house home for themselves in Sydney’s north. 

If you haven’t listened to Part 1 of my conversation with Jan and Landon in the last episode, head back to Episode 367 to hear more.

And, if you haven’t heard the first part of Jan and Landon’s project journey in our earlier episodes, I’d highly recommend checking them out. You can find them here:

In this episode, we’re diving into a few key updates from Jan and Landon, starting with their Granny Flat and how its design and construction are coming together.

We also chat through a few specific things they’re navigating right now, and I share some suggestions on what their next best steps might be.

You’ll hear us talk about how they’re working with their hydrologist and builder to figure out a stormwater solution for a pretty tricky site.

We chat about the process of choosing an Interior Designer and building confidence around making selections, especially for kitchen and bathroom finishes. Jan’s been feeling a bit unsure here, so we spent some time talking it through and helping her move forward with more ease.

And we also discuss their Granny Flat in terms of airtightness, blower door testing, and what might be possible even though the intention is not to get it certified at Passive House standards.

We also talk about white paint, and ALL.THE.CHOICES. there … and which one is my preferred in the Dulux Range.

It’s another great episode if you’re wondering what it looks like to move forward with clarity, even when there are still lots of decisions to make.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

Before we jump into my conversation with Jan and Landon, let me share some info about their timeline.

Jan and Landon joined HOME Method in January of 2024. 

We recorded our first conversation in September, 2024, when their design process was underway. And the conversation in this podcast was recorded in July 2025… 10 months later.

And a heads up on some terminology we discuss. 

We talk in this episode about something known as a ‘bund’ – that’s b u n d. 

Put simply, a bund is a barrier or raised area that’s used to contain liquids. It’s used in all types of construction, sometimes to contain hazardous liquids, and can look super industrial in nature as raised concrete walls, or be more of a landscape element that’s planted out. 

For Jan and Landon, they need some resolution on site to manage stormwater, and so we talk in more detail about this. 

I hope you find this conversation helpful, as we cover a lot of ground, including:

  • thinking about how to work collaboratively with your team and play an active role
  • speaking up when you need to
  • staying clear on your goals and make aligned, value-based decisions
  • reviewing and checking your documentation
  • understanding terminology and what’s being discussed so you can make informed choices
  • choosing interior design fixtures, finishes and colours
  • Plus – which white! 

Let’s hear from Jan and Landon now.

This is the transcript of my conversation with Jan and Landon about navigating interior selections, Passive House choices, and stormwater challenges in their new build.

Amelia Lee
With the granny flat, so is the builder going to use the same methodology of panellising it to then build it? Yeah?

Jan
Yes, he is. So it’s going to be highly insulated and all of that.

Landon
And with an HRV.

Jan
Yeah, HRV. But there are things that will happen that won’t happen in the house. So for example, in this little laundry that we hadn’t expected to use, we’re going to put in our old washing machine and dryer. And I said to him, “We’d like it to be vented outside, but it doesn’t work with Passive House.” And he said, “Well, remember, it’s not going to be certified, and the house will always be of a higher quality in terms of thermal performance that even if you have that vented to the outside.” So, that’s how it’s working.

Jan
I think it’s a good thing. I did worry about the price, but I think it’s a pragmatic choice in a way.

Amelia Lee
I think, too, given the fact that it may be somewhere that you do end up living, based on the configuration of accommodation in the house, and your physical fitness and those kinds of things, the point that A) aesthetically, it’s going to work in keeping with their home, design-wise and planning-wise, it’s going to work. And you’ve been able to design it from scratch so that you can get those level entries and transitions between the two where you need to, and then to have it be thermally comfortable.

Amelia Lee
And I think then too, Passive House, for it to be certified, has to be 0.6 air changes per hour. Whereas there’s a lot of research now showing that if you can achieve around 3 to 5 air changes per hour and have that recovery ventilation in it, then that’s a dramatic improvement on what traditional construction is. So you do have a bit of buffer for the granny flat to still be really well performing. Is the builder still going to blow it or test it and see where it’s at?

Jan
No.

Amelia Lee
Oh, they’re not? Okay.

Jan
Oh, I don’t know.

Landon
We haven’t discussed that yet. I’m a great fan of the red door test.

Jan
It may not happen because our PHPP consultant, he’d probably charge to do that test on the granny flat. So that’s not something we’ve discussed. Maybe it’s not necessary.

Amelia Lee
It might be interesting just to have the conversation, because, depending on how they scheduling it, if they’re planning on doing all of the panel erection and glazing fit out all at the same time, and so it will be a closed envelope around the same time as the house. You might find that if the blower door test is already mobilised on site, it’s not like paying for a second blower door test to get it done.

Amelia Lee
It could just be a good reckoning for you, if you are venting that laundry to the outside, thinking about whether you want to have dampers in that ventilation so that it’s not just uncontrolled air movement in and out, but it only opens when it extracts. There’s things like that, I think.

Jan
That’s a good thought.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, I think too, that getting it tested just gives you some data. So that thing of, if there is anything that they can fix, I imagine, given that this builder is a Passive House builder, they’ll have processes and methodologies in place to try and really make it as airtight as possible. And they’re doing all the things, like you’re having the ventilated cavity, and you’re doing the mechanical recovery ventilation, so the building envelope’s already being built to mitigate any risk of condensation and all of that kind of stuff. But I think for your own peace of mind, just to have a number against where that house is at, means that there won’t be any mystery for you. And you might find it’s not like paying for two blower door tests, so it would be the conversation about it. And then, if any improvements need to be made, at least the builder will have that data to work with as well.

Jan
I was just going to say that also, in the questions you asked about things that might have gone wrong, the thing that’s been exercising everybody’s mind, from the builder and the architect and the hydrologist and us, we are a bit more in the dark, is about stormwater. And we’ve had various stormwater proposals, and one of the problems is our stormwater for our block (I’m pointing to the block, sorry) has to go across this block that we’re on, where the old family home is, and then through somebody else’s, whether there are easements. But what’s been discovered is that the stormwater connection pits on this block that we have to connect up to, have actually been put in about 290 millimetres too high, and it has an impact on how we’re going to get rid of water on our block that we’re building on. And so that’s one of the problems. And another problem has been, well, because of that, and we were going to have two big tanks, we’re going to collect storm water, and where we’re going to have them is at the bottom of the block. But because they need to be raised high on concrete pads in order to get this fall, which was going to be a great big eyesore in our backyard, and then we’re going to put them up the back, and there was no room up behind the granny flat. And so it goes on.

Jan
And so the latest iteration of the plan is that the hydrologist suggested something, and I don’t even know entirely how to pronounce it. I know how to pronounce it in German, but bund. Bund, you said in German is in the backyard to make bund, which is like an in ground retention thing with a wall so that all that surface water can drain into the connection pits. And it’s all a bit of a mystery to us. And I even found myself on the internet, in a lecture given by somebody in an Indian University of constructions of bunds and what they mean. And I still can’t entirely get my head around it. I like it, the idea, better than having great big tanks stuck somewhere. Apparently, you can have it in the lawn. So it’ll still look like lawn in the backyard.

Jan
But we’re a bit in the dark, and after listening to your last podcast about the drama triangles, I think we realised that we, in fact, need to go back and say, “Can we have this explained even more clearly?”

Amelia Lee
Be the creator, not the victim, yeah?

Jan
I mean, I did learn, when they said that these stormwater connection pits on this block of land were 290 millimetres higher, I went down and had a look. We both did. And I could not work out where you measure it from, from what to what.

Jan
And so when we had the builder and the architect and the supervisor here, they gave us a very good, clear lesson on relative levels and Fort Denison, Sydney Harbour, which was a whole new one of knowledge to me. I thought it was really interesting. But this bund idea is a bit of a mystery.

Amelia Lee
Yeah. So, do you know what happens when it rains? Like, do you have problems with flooding and overland flow and water ponding on the sites? Is that something that you’ve seen?

Landon
Yes, the soil is very porous. Was it two years ago when all of that big rain happened? Also, the neighbours have very thoughtfully set up their sheds so that their water comes into our place.

Amelia Lee
Yeah. So, I mean, this is the thing is, what Council requires at a base level is that everybody manages their stormwater on their site. And so, there’s lots of incidences where neighbours will do building work, and all of a sudden your water situation will change, because their water situation has changed, and they’re not necessarily managing their stormwater on their site as effectively as they could. So, there are pathways, if anybody does have a neighbour that does that, that you can see if you can speak to Council to see what was resolved there, and whether they’ve got any more responsibility to take better care of it on their site. It sounds to me like what the hydrologist is trying to do is figure out, how do we retain water on your site in a way that slows down how it’s getting to access the stormwater system, which is then when you start to look at retention pits, balloons, those kinds of things.

Amelia Lee
And, I mean, when you think about larger scale, parks and landscape works, it’s where you start getting swales and reed beds and stuff like that, that are about basically providing water holding capacity, so that in instances of torrential water events, the land has got the ability to slow down the intake stormwater system. So the site’s got the ability to hold water and slowly release it, rather than bombard the stormwater system and then just flood it back up, where it then starts to cause problems with your building works and that kind of stuff. So, to me, there’s a couple of really big positives happening for you. Firstly is that you’ve got this team working collaboratively together to try and come up with a situation or a solution. It sounds to me like you’ve expressed some concerns about the aesthetics of the outcomes that they’ve proposed in the past, and so they’re trying to work through that.

Amelia Lee
I would never, ever, ever be worried about saying to somebody, “Look, I just don’t understand what’s going on here, and I can’t picture it. Can you please explain this to me more?” And it sounds like your team is exactly the right kind of team to say, “Yeah, sure, totally. We can. We can explain that to you.” And then, have you had any landscape design help on your project yet? Because I know you guys are avid gardeners.

Jan
We were going to, it got to be the stage where we were thinking that the money was going to be an issue. So, we haven’t. We should.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, I’m actually wondering if this would be an opportunity to speak to a local landscape designer. And it could be that you even just go down to the local landscape center and say, “Look, do you have anybody local that you would recommend?” Or your architect might have somebody that they work with. But if you’re going to have an expressed, visible stormwater solution, it’s going to be a landscape element. And so, they could have a strategy for the above ground retention pits. That means that they’re a nice landscape solution. They could have a strategy for the bund that could be a nice landscape. But to have somebody with that design head helping to think about a bigger picture of what this might look like could be a good investment of just some early conceptual input, and you might decide that that’s all you need their help with.

Amelia Lee
You just want to make sure that you get this right from an aesthetic point of view, as much as from a stormwater point of view.

Jan
That’s a good suggestion. Yeah.

Amelia Lee
Okay, because the hydrologist and the builder are going to need to tick the boxes that Council and the local water authority have on this. And that’s going to be their main goals. They’re going to be taking on board your feedback about your aesthetic desires, but if you’re also not able to picture exactly what this outcome is going to look like, you’re going to be limited in how much you can actually say to them, “Look we don’t want it to look like this. We want it to look like this.”

Amelia Lee
And so, a landscape designer or a landscape architect can be a helpful ally in navigating that as well.

Jan
Okay, so, I will definitely do that. Thanks for that. The other thing, in terms of a designer we were having, I’m having trouble imagining how my kitchen colors are going to work. And you suggested a designer, or maybe I suggested, I can’t remember.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, I know you were asking about an interior designer in the group, weren’t you?

Jan
That’s right. I have to say, and I don’t know why, but I’m sort of stuck in choosing one, and I’m just not quite sure how to get somebody who’s right. I mean, I have used, once before, when we were doing our kitchen in our old house, so I got a Dulux colour consultant. But I’m not sure if that’s the sort of person I need. So, I’m just not quite sure. I really got to stop dithering and just do it, I think.

Amelia Lee
What’s your architect done in terms of helping you select some of the interior finishes, like flooring and that kind of stuff? And you mentioned that you’ve chosen tiles.

Jan
So, well, we’ve chosen tiles for the bathrooms, the same tiles, and we’ve chosen floor tiles, and we’ve chosen engineered black butt timber for the rest of the house. And the architect was very good at finding somebody, finding a product that was a good one and sustainable as much as possible. And so now, she’s been fabulous like that. But I haven’t quite been able to explain to her what I want. And probably because I’m not even quite sure how to explain it to myself. And I have chosen a bench top, and maybe that was the mistake, because I’ve made that.

Amelia Lee
But do you love the bench top?

Jan
Sorry?

Amelia Lee
Do you love the bench top?

Jan
I think so.

Amelia Lee
Yeah? Okay.

Jan
So if that’s that’s a bit problematic in an answer…

Amelia Lee
No, no. I mean, there’s a couple of things. So one is, yeah, an interior designer can be handy in so far as they can just help you narrow down your choices. So it’s like going to the tile store and understanding that you had a selection that probably, like you said, major choices simpler. I think that given you’ve chosen, like, the flooring is the biggest aesthetic stamp on the house from a colour point of view, from a texture point of view. So the fact that you’ve chosen that means that you’ve already set in place a bit of a framework for what you want, and then you’ve chosen the tiles as well for your bathroom. So, you know in HOME Method, we talk about how one of the ways to get your home feeling well-connected and holistic overall, is to look at all of the internal and external finishes of the whole place.

Amelia Lee
And so, I don’t know if it’s possible for you to get some samples of the flooring that you’ve chosen and the tiles that you’ve chosen, find somewhere that you can set up just a big board and stick those on them so that you can see them. And then it could be that, yes, and you’ve got your bench top as well, so you could get that. What are you doing in your bathrooms, for your vanities? Have you chosen? Do you need to just pick finishes and bench tops for those as well? Or are you choosing off the shelf vanity items?

Jan
That’s something I’m not quite sure. I thought that that was part of…

Amelia Lee
Part of the joinery package?

Jan
Yeah, the joinery. So that’s where I’m a little bit unsure.

Amelia Lee
Yeah. And so what are you finding tricky in terms of locking in to an interior designer?

Jan
Choosing one. It’s choosing one.

Amelia Lee, Undercover Architect  17:33

Have you had a chat too many?

Jan  17:35

No, I haven’t had a chat to any.

Amelia Lee
You’re looking at their websites and things like that, are you, and finding it a bit tricky?

Jan
Yeah, that’s why I thought I had it on the HOME Method, so that I thought somebody around Sydney might have found somebody they really loved.

Amelia Lee
Have you looked in the UA Army at some of the interior designers we have in there? So, if you have a look inside the UA Army, which is inside the HOME Method platform, there’ll be interior designers there who are aligned with the HOME Method and Undercover Architect or that we know HOME Method members have used, and so we’ve reached out to them and said, “Hey, do you want to have your details listed?” So that can be a good way to go.

Jan
That’s a good idea.

Amelia Lee
Don’t feel that you have to work with somebody local. You can work with somebody remotely, because they can show you stuff on screen, and then they can put stuff in the post to you to help you make choices. Or they can say to you, this is the product I’m looking at. You head to your local Dulux colour center. Or you head to your local Bunnings, and you can grab the laminate sample or the cut the paint color sample as well. What are you doing your kitchen joinery in like, what’s in the pricing at the moment?

Jan
I think it’s going to be laminates in terms of the joinery, because it was a bit slightly… Well, polyurethane was more expensive than Laminex. And we did go into town to the big Laminex showroom, and they were helpful. And it seems to me that Laminex is having a big push to have more sophisticated images, an image that’s more sophisticated. The builders said, “Do you really want Laminex? You’re building this beautiful house. Do you think Laminex ties in?” And I thought, “Well, it’s what we can afford really.”

Amelia Lee
Oh, and it’s super durable, and there’s lots of really lovely finishes. And my suggestion would be, and I’m not sure what’s priced, but getting the ABS edging rather than the laminates edging. The ABS has like a plastic edging on it. And that, to me, is a much nicer edging. And I sometimes play with that ABS edging. I will sometimes do it. They’ve got one that looks like ply. So you see the strips of the ply on the edge, or I’ll pick a contrast colour, like a silver or a black or something like that, rather than trying to pick a matching colour. But you can have a chat to the Laminex people and have a look. Or you can have a chat to your cabinet maker about it as well and see what their suggestions are. The ABS edging I find more durable long term, you don’t get this weird, when you have a Laminex edge where you see…

Amelia Lee
And I think that’s the thing that Laminex has suffered from, is people have lived in kitchens that have then been from the 70s and 80s and 90s, where the edging has then flipped up.

Jan
We have that here in this old house. The thing is that I think that the Laminex edging that we’re going to have is the Laminex is going to be moulded, which, of course, is more expensive. And so we’re doing that in the kitchen, but not in the rest of the house.

Amelia Lee
What bench top have you chosen?

Jan
A Dekton.

Amelia Lee
Okay.

Jan
A Dekton benchtop.

Amelia Lee
Porcelain, yeah?

Jan
Yeah.

Amelia Lee
All right. Just to go back, do you have any idea about the colour palettes that you’re drawn to?

Jan
I’m always drawn to natural colours and things. So I had ideas of the things I love. I love those kitchens that are bit Japan-dy or those ones, but not wanting it to look like a 1960s or 50s kitchen. But I also don’t want it to be all timber or anything. We’ve got an island beach that has a curving in underneath, and it’s going to be lined in wooden strips of black butt. So that will look really smart. It’s sort of a gray green. But I have to be careful that it doesn’t all look too matchy-matchy. I don’t know. Obviously, you talked about being confident. I am so not confident in this, Amelia.

Amelia Lee
This is the point, though. And I think what happens is when you’ve never done this before, these are the finishes that you can touch and feel and that you know you’ll be interacting with on a day-to-day basis. Whereas when somebody says to you, “Hey, pick a cladding or pick a window frame,” you’re kind of like, “It just feels like a big building product to me.” Whereas, like, the tap I’m going to be touching, or the bench top I’m going to be cutting things on, or the cupboard door I’m going to be closing, that’s something. And because you can walk into a showroom and you can pick up a colour sample, and you can walk back out, it does, it feels a lot more overwhelming, just the amount of choice that’s available, and trying to piece it all together. So, my suggestion would be, check out the UA Army for potential interior designers that you can work with, collect together the samples that you do have and that you’ve locked in, because they will help that interior designer have an understanding of the kind of thing that you’re looking at. Have you seen any images online that you like, or anything like that?

Jan
Yes, I have. I have seen, but I can’t quite make it work in my head. And partly, I wonder if I’ve chosen too early the Dekton colour. And it hasn’t been built. It hasn’t been bought.

Amelia Lee
What was it that drew you to it? Why did you choose it?

Jan
I think we went to the Dekton showroom. I mean, we’ve been to all these places, and I think there was something that I liked about it, and I thought that that would fit in, and I didn’t like all the others. But I don’t even have to have Dekton, I know it’s quite expensive.

Amelia Lee
Well, obviously, I think that because you picked it, there’s some aesthetic attraction to it. And so you can brief the interior designer and say, “Look, I’m not wedded to this, but it is along the lines of the kind of thing that I was thinking. And then these are the images of other stuff that I like, but I just can’t apply them to my finished home.” And they can look, then, at the architectural form and the aesthetics of the external finishes. And really, it sounds like all you’re needing is your joinery colours, potentially your benchtop colour, what you might do on your splashback, and then the same thing with the vanities in the bathrooms. And with vanities in bathrooms, you can do them as a complete copy of whatever you’ve done in your kitchen and just do exactly the same materials. Or you can choose tones that are darker, or tones that are lighter, or you can choose contrasting tones. And it might be that you want to do your en suite in something, we’ve had Homees done really dramatic statements in there on suites because they knew it was their bathroom. They wanted to have something that was really personal, or right across to choosing something that’s very subdued.

Amelia Lee
And then, I mean, I’m trying to remember which member it was, but somebody chose the tile for their laundry that’s got drawings of dogs on it because they fell in love with it at the tile store, and the person who was serving them said, “Look, it’s in your laundry. You’re going to be the one that gets to be the one that gets to see it. Have some fun with it.”

Jan
Which is about good bit of advice, isn’t it?

Amelia Lee
Yeah.

Jan
Like, you can always replace them down the track if you’re sick of dogs.

Amelia Lee
And I think you’ve got to smile when you walk into your laundry.

Jan
You asked me what was in our house. I forgot to say the other room in our house is a combined laundry, bathroom. That was the other room.

Amelia Lee
Gotcha, awesome. So, I think that you’ve done more towards choosing your interiors than you possibly realise, and I think that you’ve gone further down the track. Like you say to me, “Look I’m confused and I’m not quite sure,” but I think that you’re further down the track of making the decisions than you realise.

Amelia Lee
And when you’re working with the right person, I think it’ll come together quickly. The fact that you’ve chosen a couple of really key finishes is going to help tailor in those decisions faster.

Jan
I do have examples of all those things, the benchtop, the timber strips, the possible tiles, all of those things, just trying to work it out. It’s just, I need to be able to pull it together. I need somebody’s expertise. That’s what I need.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, awesome. You’ve also got cost points too, which is super helpful for narrowing down those decisions as well. So that’s going to be really brilliant. Alrighty. And I think too, that was one of the questions that we had about the decisions around your selections and that kind of stuff. So I think, too, ensuring that it also is in alignment with that long term durability, which the Laminex, I think, is a really good performer for that, and the Dekton or a similar kind of benchtop is a really good performer from that point of view. And low maintenance, the accessibility requirements, that sort of stuff is all super, super helpful. Can you share with us, because I know that you actually popped it in the group that you had a sod turning ceremony on site, which just sounded like a lovely rite of passage, yeah.

Jan
It was Landon’s idea.

Amelia Lee
What was that about Landon? What did you do that for?

Landon
Well, I think there should be ceremonies. I like the idea of sticking a tree on the roof when the roof goes on and all that sort of stuff. So we had a sod turning ceremony, and that broke up the guy on the digger. And so it’s just the builder, and a stainless steel spade.

Jan
Oh, and the building supervisor took some photos. And actually, when Landon raised this with the builder, the builder said, “Okay, we’ll do that.” And so we were all out there at the crack of dawn, and it was freezing, and it caused a bit of merriment, really. A ritual is quite powerful somehow. Yes, I’d forgotten about that. You see, all that’s gone.

Amelia Lee
No, absolutely love it. So, is there anything else that we haven’t covered or that you wanted to chat about?

Jan
I don’t think so.

Landon
You’ve been a good help on this last part, it’s the colouring stuff. Our daughter said the other day not to choose a colour of tiles or painting the cupboards and things too close together, because it looks like you were trying to match it and didn’t quite succeed.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, it is interesting, because you do see a lot of designers doing very monochromatic fit outs. And it can work, but you’ve got to examine the different finishes in different light conditions, because a green tile can throw all sorts of shades in the same way that a green piece of Laminex can. And if they’re side by side, and you’re getting one throwing blue, at the same time, another one’s throwing brown or something like that, when it’s supposed to look like a green hued kitchen, then that’s when you can start to have that jarring effect. So, I think you do, you’ve got a little bit of time up your sleeve, and so being able to get somebody on board, get those finishes all in a place where you can look at them all together, and then you can look at them in different light conditions. What’s it like at evening time? What’s it like first thing in the morning, in the middle of the day? You’ll start to see how that works. And I think when you’ve got a timber floor and you’ve got timber battening on your island bench, I think that you’ve probably got the opportunity to do quite flat finishes for your colours, like you’re choosing a colour palette rather than a texture palette, I think.

Amelia Lee
I mean, a lot of people will lean right into all of the natural textures, and they’ll play off all the natural textures against each other. From what I see of and what our conversations have been like, I don’t think that that’s what you’re seeking. I think you’re seeking tones that are inspired by nature, and you’ve got natural materials within that palette, but you want to make sure that the natural materials aren’t trying to be mimicked by textures or pretend materials in other places. And so the fact that you’re investing in timber battening, and you’ve got that engineered flooring, to me, then, Laminex do have a couple of really lovely, soft gray green colors. There’s one called Spinifex, which is actually a color that I particularly like. And you might find that you could do something like a lighter, paler green in the kitchen, which I imagine is going to be a really lovely light-filled space that looks out to the courtyard space. And then you could go maybe a moody, darker green, or something like that in the bathrooms, which are a more intimate area. And it’s not necessarily being about this bathed in light kind of experience.

Amelia Lee
But putting them all together on the board will help you ensure that they’re going to resonate with each other. And that, as you’re moving from room to room, you’re not jarring it, jumping from a brown room to a green room to a yellow room.

Jan
No, we definitely don’t want that. Yeah.

Amelia Lee
And then I think too, that will help you choose your paint colours as well. So figuring out what you’re going to do your internal paint in, whether you want to change paint colours in different rooms. You can have your skirtings, your walls, your ceilings, all that kind of stuff as well.

Jan
It’s interesting that the architect says that she always specifies, I can’t remember what white it is now… I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting.” I thought, we’ve got to choose colours.

Amelia Lee
You will. You can always say to her, “No, we’d prefer to do that.” But I found that as an architect, there was always a white that I found just worked with pretty much most palettes. And for me, Dulux Whisper White is always an easy go-to because it works with lots of different ones.

Jan
I think the one she uses is Lexicon. I think that’s it.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, so Lexicon can be quite blue and cold.

Jan
Right. It might just go with the floor.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, and we’ve had some HOME Method members mention that lately. I think somebody tried out Lexicon. You can do Lexicon Quarter, and it won’t be as cold, but it is a colder white. But yeah, in the Dulux range, the Whisper White is always an easy one. Chalk USA is also a good one.

Jan
We’ve used that.

Amelia Lee
Yeah, but I think when you do have a black butt floor, you want a white that’s got a bit of body to it, so it will have a little bit of a tint.

Jan
Yeah, okay. So, we hadn’t got round to that, but yeah, we’ll choose our colour. But white, because we have a lot of artwork, we want it to be the background.

Landon
Is chalk USA a bit yellow?

Amelia Lee
It can be a little bit when it’s sitting next to certain products, yeah. So, yeah, it’s definitely worth it. And I think that’s the thing, like you can go onto the Dulux website.

Amelia Lee
I mean, of course, you can walk into a Dulux store and you can get the swatch, but also on the Dulux website, you can order bigger A4 size brush outs. And so you can get, like, a bigger sample without you having to buy a sample pot, and paint that kind of stuff yourself. And then you can at least have those bigger things sitting beside your products and that kind of stuff. And just make sure that if you do pick a Dulux color, that you then choose a Dulux paint to paint the walls with. If the builders is going to use Tarpons to paint with, then choose a color from the Tarpons palette, because it’s always really tricky matching color matching. They do a pretty good job of it. But if you’ve agonised over choosing a particular colour, you want to make sure that’s the colour you’re going to get. Yeah.

Jan
Okay, that sounds good.

Amelia Lee
I’ve taken up a lot of your time. Is there anything before we wrap up?

Jan
We’ve covered everything. Look I’ve got all these that we put together, but I think we’ve just about really done it, I think.

Amelia Lee
All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. It’s been so awesome to have this conversation with you. I know the listeners will love this update, and everything that we’ve been able to chat about, we’ve literally gone from macro to micro and back out again. So we’ve covered lots of things. So it’s been so lovely to catch up with you, Jan and Landon, and I’m so looking forward to seeing more of your updates as construction unfolds, it’s going to be really exciting.

Jan
Thanks, Amelia.

Landon
Thanks, Amelia.

Jan
We’ve enjoyed it, too.

RESOURCES

Jan and Landon’s previous episodes on the podcast:

Passive House episodes on Season 8:

Access the support and guidance you need (like Jan and Landon did) to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my flagship online program, HOME METHOD >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/the-home-method/

Learn more about how to interview and select the right builder with the Choose Your Builder mini-course >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/choose-your-builder 

My free ’44 Ways’ E-Book will simplify sustainability for you, and help you create a healthy, low tox and sustainable home – whatever your dreams, your location or your budget. Access your copy here >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/ways

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