Interior designer Justin Bishop loves working with clients who aren’t afraid of making bold statements, and his ongoing commitment to choosing quality Australian-made products from the Australian Moulding and Door Company (AMDC) helps him turn those bold visions into stylish realities.
As the founder of Justin Bishop Interiors, he first experienced the AMDC difference when his business began back in 2016.
“It was one of my very first interior design jobs, for a project over in Strathmore, in Melbourne. We’re talking late 90s here.”
He remembers the builder on the project handing him an AMDC brochure and inviting him to choose some profiles.
From then on, Justin has worked with AMDC consistently.
For this gorgeously grand home in Melbourne’s leafy eastern suburb of Canterbury, he believes there was simply no other choice.
The role of an interior designer, he says, is to consider every element of a home’s look, feel and functionality - from the stone, the tiles, the paint colours and, “of course all the beautiful profiling for the skirting and moudlings”.
He says the AMDC range, “and the fact that it’s all local” is what resonates with him.
“The range is an extensive one, and it fits my design style perfectly. It’s all very classic, very timeless. It’s a good fit for me.”
And when he is invited to share his interior design eye and uncompromising commitment to quality to complete a stunning high-end residential project like the Canterbury home, Justin says it “warrants this extra level of detail”.
Piecing together the overwhelming selections of everything from dado rails to wall panelling is achieved by focusing on the finished product,” Justin says.
“I try to envisage what that’s going to be like and how that’s going to feel.”
In the case of this generously proportioned property, he says the client wanted to carry one neutral colour scheme throughout the entire home - and the result is one of refined sophistication.
It is an aesthetic that enabled Justin to celebrate the scale of the home and be more adventurous with the choice of mouldings and the way they worked together across each level of the three-storey home.
“This home is very heavily profiled with moulding and skirting design. but it’s also about the paint colour and the furnishings as well,” he says.
Knowing that each room would present as reasonably understated - especially with the continuing colour throughout - “meant that we could push the detailing of the choice of panelling to a little bit of the next level”.
“We’ve gone a little bit bigger with some of the scale, we’ve gone a little bit more ornate with some of the profiles but because the colours are so subdued, you can do that without going over the top,” he says.
“Then you look at the proportions of the room. You might scale up the size of the skirts and the cornices, so that everything works together proportionately.”
Although wall panelling throughout the entire home might sound over the top, Justin says the air of elegant sophistication is created because of the neutral colour palette.
Achieving perfect flow from each new room within the space adds to the visual impact - an impact that Justin carried through to choosing timber moulding around the fireplace, instead of the original intention to use stone or marble.
“To continue the classic look of the house, I thought it would be nicer to have a timber moulded surround,” he says. “It’s the same profiling, so it worked beautifully.”
The multiple custom curves and archways that form such an impressive feature of the home are, Justin says, “a reflection of the exterior”.
“The building designer and the client wanted a lot of archways.” By using the same profiling for the curves as he did for the architraves, spaces flow seamlessly from each other, with the statement doors used throughout also relating back to the windows, as well as the profiles of the skirting and architraves that are such an important aspect of each room.
“I wanted to have some bold statements throughout the home that were consistent,” he says.
Perhaps the boldest of those statements is the choice of an over-sized dado rail that runs through the home.
“It really is the centrepoint of all the rooms,” Justin says. “The panelling works off it, and because we’ve done detailing like wallpaper, it’s something that brings it all together.”
