Apartment renovations can look deceptively straightforward. But before the stone, tiles and tapware comes a more important question: what can actually move? A look at why the best apartment renovations begin with the decisions you can’t see.

We’ve become rather good at adding more. More space, more storage, more bathrooms, bigger kitchens. But does more always make a better home? Perhaps the most interesting renovations aren’t about how much we can change, but knowing what’s worth changing at all.

Good design doesn’t begin with a trend or a desire to recreate the past. It begins with understanding what is already there, what the environment brings and who the home needs to work for. The brief evolves as those elements come together. And that is precisely why the end result should never feel like a formula. It should belong to the home, and to the people within it.

Why are Australians so cautious with colour? A look at what Europe does differently, what might be holding us back, and whether our love affair with neutrals is finally beginning to shift.

What an apartment renovation taught me about protecting the view, understanding the building and asking better questions before work begins.

On the quiet tyranny of the alcove that isn't quite the alcove it claims to be.

On heritage, adaptation and the homes that refuse to become obsolete.

Some thought behind the assumptions.