The Design of South House: Merimbula, Rendered in Colour and Texture

Some hotels are decorated. South House Hotel was created from the outside in, starting with the place itself.

Merimbula sits at the point where a tidal lake meets the open Pacific, framed by eucalypt forest, weathered timber jetties and long stretches of sand that shift colour with the tide. That landscape isn't a mood board for South House — it's the whole brief. Every material, colour, and finish in the building was chosen to hold a conversation with what's just outside the window.

A palette pulled from the land, lake, and the sea

Walk through South House Hotel and you're moving through the tonal range of Merimbula itself: the deep sapphire-blue of the lake at high tide, the bleached driftwood grey of the boardwalk, the warm ochre of the sand dunes at Short Point, the soft eucalyptus tones of the surrounding bushland and the terracotta red of Mermibula's iconic rock formations. Designer Olivia Naim from Studio Naim, describes the approach as 'creating a space that really ties back to its environment and feels luxurious whilst also not feeling out of place.'

Designed to be lived in, not just photographed

The brief for Olivia  wasn't a showpiece — it was a place that felt inevitable, like it had grown out of the site rather than been placed on it. Furniture is generous rather than precious. Light is treated as a material in its own right, with the building oriented  to track the sun across the lake through the day. Public spaces - House Bar Poolside and House Bar Fireside - are built for long, unhurried stays, not fast turnover. Olivia explains, 'it should feel like an escape... I think that the best hotel rooms really achieve that calm, quiet luxury that you just can't find in your everyday life because at the end of the day, when you're booking something to stay, especially somewhere as beautiful as Merimbula, you want to feel like you're getting something that you can't get anywhere else.'

That's the real design story of South House: not a set of finishes, but a decision to let Merimbula design the hotel.