Dulux Colour Awards 2026

What the judges said...

“An architectural exercise in modern nostalgia, the painstakingly restored 1890s villa, formerly compromised by unsympathetic alterations, has been extended to become an inter-generational family home. Bold, tonal colour has played the lead role in the project’s transition, through the contemporary reimagining of the historical context. It restores coherence to the house, allowing architecture, planting and colour to operate as a continuous system once again. In the Victorian architecture, deep greens occupied a regulated role, while in contemporary times, ‘heritage’ palettes often deploy these tones cautiously rather than with the confidence of the nineteenth-century. At Nithsdale, these conventions are eschewed and what was once constrained to details now dominates, with two Dulux greens, Bronze Icon and Tambo Tank, drenching the exterior. Rendered masonry, timber, quoining, and wrought iron are chromatically unified, with difference expressed through finish rather than colour, such as enamelled iron juxtaposed with matte walls. Crucially, the greens are deliberate selections drawn from the immediate native landscape and species indigenous to Wangal Country, rendering the house as an element within foliage rather than distinct from it. The strategic concept is mature, elegant and sophisticated, and we particularly applaud the many decisions and countless site visits required to achieve this result.”

Ben Peake, judge.