Home Interior of the Year
Home Interior of the Year is an awards programme designed to celebrate the best of New Zealand residential interior design and architecture.
The awards seek to recognise outstanding design in five distinct areas of the home: Kitchen, Bathroom, Living, Lighting, and Bedroom, inviting entrants to submit recently completed work that fits into one or more of these categories. In addition, two further categories, Colour, and Emerging Designer, consider masterful use of colour in an interior space, and the work of a young or early-career designer respectively.
The winner of each category receives a prize valued at $10,000, consisting of a cash component and media value across the HOME brands.
Entries are invited from those who work in the design sector, across architecture, kitchen and bathroom design, and interior decoration and design.
The Categories
You are welcome to enter as many categories as you like. Whether a project fits into a certain category is open to your interpretation. Entry to the awards is free and is open to designers whose projects are located in New Zealand.
Living | Kitchen | Bedroom | Lighting | Bathroom | Colour | Emerging Designer
Key Dates
June 2025
Entries open for Interior of the Year 2025.
Details announced in the June/July issue of HOME and online.
August 2025
Entries close for Interior of the Year 2025; judges announced.
Preliminary judging begins.
September 2025
Judging concludes. Finalists announced across all HOME channels.
Readers’ Choice Award voting opens.
October 2025
Awards presentation event and announcement of winners.
HOME’s Interior of the Year Special (October/November issue) hits the shelves. All winners are publicly announced and published in this issue.
Prospect House
at.space & MAUD
This mid-century inspired Mt Eden interior by at.space and MAUD Architecture offers a masterclass in texture and tactility, biophilia, and timeless sophistication.
There are houses from childhood that have a way of staying with you well into adulthood. They are filled with memories of the places where games were played; safe havens; or just new experiences that eventually came to inhabit a faded cartography of interior spaces. For Alex McLeod — who co-owns this house, which she conceptualised through her interior design company, at.space — the strongest of such memories came from her grandfather’s house.
Bathroom of the Year 2024
A Little Light
Emerging Designer of the Year 2024
Queenstown Hill
Fremont Studio
Kitchen of the Year 2024
Showroom Kitchen 1
Rowson Kitchens
Lighting Design of the Year 2024
Seaward House
Space Division
Waiti House
Ko & Ko and Crosson Architects
So much of this Taranaki home by Crosson Architects and Ko & Ko — which won the 2024 Bedroom of the Year Award and the Interior of the Year Readers’ Choice Award — has been designed to reach for the stars.
Stars, heritage, biculturalism, and a deep respect for the land are at the core of the architecture and design of this family home in Ōakura, north-west of New Plymouth. Driven by the Brazilian origin of its clients, the main architectural move was to create a plan that, from above, emulates their home country’s flag.
An impressive, circular internal courtyard — with a spiral staircase at its edges that leads to a star observation area — is made to recreate the blue, starry circle at the heart of the flag. Step back further, and the yellow rhombus that surrounds the circle is interpreted on plan as the perimeter of the house, while the green that frames the flag equates to the large expanse of green land that surrounds this abode.
Endless Summer – Kitchen
Detail by Davinia Sutton Ltd
McAdam Drive Home – Bathroom
Ben Hudson Architects
Parirau – Living
Megan Edwards Architects
Penrith Peaks – Living
Condon Scott Architects
Cunninghams Drive Home – Living
Ben Hudson Architects
Taunton Green – Bathroom
Kate Carter Interior Design
Speargrass House
Arent&Pyke
This internationalist interior by Arent&Pyke is a soulful expression of creativity and intimacy.
Within the vastness of the Queenstown skies, bathed often by sunlight reflected from fresh snowfalls; positioned on a 35ha plateau in the Wakatipu Basin; and overlooking the enormity of the alpine ranges — how does an interior bring human scale to such a picture?
How can a room ground and envelop its inhabitants or, like Sarah-Jane Pyke from Australian design firm Arent&Pyke asks on the phone, “How do you sit on the sofa and not feel lost?”
Resene Colour Award 2023
Speargrass House
Arent&Pyke
Emerging Designer of the Year 2023
The Dowel Project
Fieldcraft
Kitchen of the Year 2023
Speargrass House
Arent&Pyke
Living Space of the Year 2023
The Geode House
Sartoria
Mt Eden Kitchen
Atelier Aitken
At first sight, the monolithic Carrara island seems out
of place among the warmth from timber flooring and
cabinetry: like a marbled glacier floating on a tropical
lagoon. Yet, somehow … it works. The solid walnut on the
walls, the strong brass handles replicated on structural
elements on the floating, overhead cabinetry are then
followed by the honey-coloured oak of herringbone floors.
There is a gentle transition between the opposing colours,
which, although based on classical ideas of elegance, have
a contemporary vibe that is hard to look away from.
Sure, its Japan-architecture influence is very much on
trend, but when paired with the brass bling and black
partition framing, you get an idea that it is not the result
of fashion or flimsy but a more robust design concept.
This is a kitchen that exudes respect for the heritage
exterior of the home it inhabits, plays with proportions to
create the mirage of generosity in a small footprint, and
does it all with confidence of style.
Bathroom of the Year 2022
Devonport Villa – En Suite
Rebecca Bailey Design
Emerging Designer of the Year 2022
The View House
MJWarchitecture
Read more about previous entrants and winners
McAdam Drive