The brief
A collaboration with interior designer Di Henshall on a commercial interior in Noosa: a feature wall of sculpted plaster panels with recessed shadow gaps, where texture - not colour - would carry the room.
The designer's intent was for raking light to do the work: a surface that changes through the day as the sun moves across it.
What we did
Corse marmorino is the coarser grade of the marble-lime family and it holds texture the way a fine marmorino holds sheen. We built the panels up with deliberate, layered trowel work, leaving the surface open and dimensional rather than burnishing it flat.
The shadow gaps were cut through the layered plaster to crisp, recessed lines - the geometry that turns a textured wall into a composed one. Each panel was worked to read as its own field while the lines hold the whole wall together.
Colour was kept to a warm off-white so that every shift in the surface is drawn by light and shadow alone.
The detail
- Corse marmorino built up in layered, open trowel work.
- Recessed shadow gaps cut to crisp lines between panels.
- Warm off-white - texture carries the design, not colour.
- Designer collaboration from concept to sample to wall.
The result
The owners have a wall that does something different at every hour, flat in the morning light and standing proud by afternoon, without anything on it to maintain. Sculpted marmorino is lime and marble, so it breathes, resists mould and patinas rather than wears, and the shadow gaps are formed in the plaster itself rather than added later. It is designed to be lived with over a day rather than glanced at once.
