No two rooms at Billy's, Ayrburn are the same. From the richly layered Flower Room to the intimate Reading Room and heritage-inspired Dispense Bar, each space has its own identity.

Together, they create a sequence of interiors that unfolds through moments of discovery. This distinctive approach to colour was recognised with the 2026 Dulux Colour Award for Commercial Interior - Public & Hospitality.

Designed in collaboration with SA Studio and client Winton, Billy's is a restaurant within a restored 1890s heritage homestead at the Ayrburn hospitality precinct in Queenstown. The venue uses colour as a core storytelling device, with more than 15 Dulux hues carefully composed across five intimate dining rooms, the main and dispense bars, bathrooms and the new Conservatory, creating a series of spaces that each tell their own story while contributing to a unified whole.

To mark the award, we step inside the rooms and share the inspiration behind each palette.

Inspired by the original homestead matriarch, Elizabeth Paterson, and her love of gardening, the Flower Room draws its palette from the soft sage tones woven through the floral wallpaper. Rather than introducing competing colours, the specification of Expanse and Shire extends those botanical hues throughout the space, creating an immersive room that feels connected to both the home's history and the surrounding landscape.

The Reading Room immerses guests in a muted rust-red inspired by Patty, one of the Paterson family’s daughters, and the tale of her celebrated red beret. Burnished Russet is applied in two gloss finishes allowing light and movement to shift across surfaces and reveal different tonal variations throughout the day.

The playful and intimate Drawing Room is defined by pink-purple reds expressed through the floral print wallpaper and echoed in three subtle tonal variations; Velvet Cushion, Marrakesh and Wild Party. Selected to read as one continuous colour, the tones respond to shifting natural light with a deeper saturation in the window alcove to emphasise architectural details and unify the space.

Sometimes the most meaningful design decisions come from what already exists. During an early site visit Associate Alice Noguès noticed the original green painted kitchen ceiling, an unexpected detail that became the inspiration for the Dispense Bar palette. “When we visited the homestead for the first time, the charming green ceiling paint caught our eye. To celebrate the building’s layered story and create a historical thread, we specified Dulux’s thicket green, a close match to the original colour.”

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