2026 Momo Awards Winner: Claybourne House

Created in collaboration with builder Arden Vale Homes, Claybourne House reimagines the traditional display home as a Residential Atelier: a place where prospective clients can experience what their own home might become.

Warm, liveable and quietly luxurious, the Highfields project stood out for its confident material palette and thoughtful use of hardware. Rather than treating cabinet hardware as a final addition, Melinda Taylor Interiors + Design embedded it into the interior concept from the beginning, allowing each finish to respond to the mood and purpose of the room.

Designed to be felt

Arden Vale Homes approached Melinda Taylor Interiors + Design with a brief to create a home that showcased the quality of its work without feeling staged or overly polished.

“Before a home is built, it has to be sold, and before it’s sold, it has to be felt,” explains Melinda Taylor, Principal and Creative Director of Melinda Taylor Interiors + Design.

The intention was for visitors to slow down, settle in and leave with a genuine sense of the care behind every Arden Vale home. Claybourne House also offered an opportunity to bring something unexpected to the Toowoomba market through bolder colour, richer materials and moments of considered contrast.

A material palette built by layer

Colour and texture are central to Melinda’s work, so the complete finishes palette was resolved before furniture or lighting entered the conversation. Each surface was sampled and tested alongside the others until every material had earned its place.

The finished home draws on country warmth with a restrained, contemporary expression. Reclaimed timber, leathered stone, handmade tiles, terrazzo-look surfaces and deep wall colours create a richly layered interior.

Within this shared material language, each room has its own temperature and mood. A handmade red tile anchors the kitchen, while the bathrooms introduce olive wave tiles in an alternating gloss and matt pattern, allowing the surface to shift with the light. In the media room, a deep muddy green extends across the walls and vaulted ceiling to create an immersive, cocooning retreat.

Hardware as a tactile thread

The Momo Belgravia Knurled collection follows the palette from room to room.
Dark Brushed Brass warms the kitchen, butler’s pantry, study and sales office, complementing timber, deep mocha cabinetry and the earthy red kitchen tiles. In the bathrooms and laundry, the palette transitions to Dull Brushed Nickel, bringing a cooler and quieter quality to the more restorative spaces.

While the finish changes, the distinctive knurled detailing remains consistent. This creates a tactile thread throughout the home, connecting spaces with different moods without asking them to feel the same.

The result demonstrates how hardware can respond to its surroundings while still bringing cohesion to an entire interior.

The defining detail

For Melinda, the kitchen best captures the character of Claybourne House.

The handmade red tile splashback was one of the project’s most pivotal decisions. Its warmth and intensity were questioned early in the process, particularly alongside the stone, but the design team held firm.

The finished combination of red tile, leathered stone, timber and Dark Brushed Brass gives the kitchen its sense of confidence and warmth. The brass hardware is drawn forward by the tile, while the textured stone provides a grounding counterpoint.

Every decision supports the next, creating a room Melinda describes as “confident, considered and warm”.

A winning collaboration

Claybourne House was shaped through close collaboration between Melinda Taylor Interiors + Design, Arden Vale Homes, the project’s trades and its suppliers. The team balanced moments that were fundamental to the design with carefully considered efficiencies, maintaining the integrity of the concept while respecting the commercial realities of the project.

For Momo, Claybourne House demonstrates the impact hardware can have when it is considered from the beginning. The transition between Dark Brushed Brass and Dull Brushed Nickel does more than complement the palette. It helps define the atmosphere of each space, while the consistent knurled detailing holds the wider story together.

Congratulations to Melinda Taylor Interiors + Design, Arden Vale Homes and the entire Claybourne House project team on being named the inaugural Momo Awards winner.

About Melinda Taylor Interiors + Design

Led by Principal and Creative Director Melinda Taylor, Melinda Taylor Interiors + Design works across residential, commercial, aged care and early learning interiors.

Working from Albion in Brisbane, Toowoomba and Melbourne, the studio creates spaces guided by colour, texture, collaboration and longevity. Its work is grounded in the belief that the places in which we live, learn, work and age should positively influence how we feel.

Visit Melinda Taylor Interiors + Design or follow @m.t.id_au on Instagram.