A bold New Zealand build proves that electrical fittings can carry as much design weight as any bespoke fixture.

Project overview

Location: Lake Taupō, New Zealand’s Central North Island, Builder: Design Builders, Electrical fittings: Clipsal Solis T Series (Ebony Aluminium, White Ceramic, Brushed Brass toggles), smart home integration: Clipsal Wiser

The brief

Situated near the shores of Lake Taupō, where the Central North Island’s volcanic plateau gives way to native bush and open water, Design Builders set out to create a show home capable of communicating the full breadth of the company’s craft to prospective clients. The concept brief was direct: dark and moody, materially rich, architecturally assertive. The resulting two-storey residence would need to hold its own against some of the region’s most dramatic natural scenery, while demonstrating that high-end residential construction could be both formally bold and genuinely liveable.

Design approach

Working from a palette of dark timber slats, stone, concrete panelling and steel, the design team crafted a home that announces itself immediately through an asymmetrical gable façade before drawing visitors inward through a hallway of considerable presence. Dark, tactile wood and concrete-panelled walls react to filtered natural light, creating a layered display of textures that sets the tone for the rest of the interior. The bespoke staircase, with its open spacing, allows borrowed light to penetrate deep into the plan.

The home’s centrepiece is a kitchen and living area defined by double-height raking ceilings, a statement light cluster and an expansive feature window that frames native bush, the waters of Lake Taupō and the volcanic peaks beyond. A mezzanine overlooks this anchoring element, while a covered outdoor area with a built-in fire and barbecue completes the sequence, blurring the boundary between interior comfort and landscape connection.

The role of the fitting

Selecting the Clipsal Solis T Series for the project reflected a growing understanding among architects and interior designers that the electrical fitting represents a genuine visual consequence within a considered interior. Placed at eye level and encountered dozens of times a day, a switch plate carries a tactile and aesthetic weight that few other elements of a room can claim, yet it remains one of the last components to be specified in most residential projects.

The Solis T Series addresses this gap with a product designed from the outset for high-end architecture. Its defining characteristic is the combination of robust toggle mechanisms with thin, flush cover plates available in a curated range of premium finishes, including Ebony Aluminium, White Ceramic and Brushed Brass. Toggles and plate finishes can be mixed and matched independently, giving designers the latitude to respond precisely to the material and tonal conditions of each space rather than accepting a single off-the-shelf solution.

Specified outcomes

The Solis T Series was deployed throughout the Taupō show home, with careful attention to its relationship with surrounding materials and surfaces. Upon entry, Ebony Aluminium plates paired with Brushed Brass toggles and dimmers make a material statement against the dark timber and concrete of the hallway, establishing a luxurious precedent that persists through the whole interior.

In the kitchen, Ebony Aluminium against white walls produces a graphic contrast, while built-in USB Fast Chargers integrate practical convenience into the switching function without visual compromise.

A Brushed Brass switch plate mounted flush to the end of the kitchen banquette demonstrates the T Series’ capacity to read as furniture rather than infrastructure, its warm metallic tone echoing the velvet upholstery of the adjacent seating. Upstairs, Ebony Aluminium maintains the dark palette of the master suite, while second and third bedrooms shift to White Ceramic plates with discreet LED indicators, allowing the fittings to recede into lighter walls without disappearing entirely.

The Solis range also provided seamless integration with the home’s Clipsal Wiser smart home system, enabling centralised control of lighting, blinds, audiovisual equipment and the property’s EV charger through a single app interface. The result is a fitting that performs technically at the level the architecture demands without asking occupants to sacrifice the tactile satisfaction of a physical toggle.

Designer response

For Matt and Jess Corleison of Design Builders, the Solis T Series delivered something they had not anticipated from a switching product: it became a talking point. Visitors to the show home consistently noticed the switches before being directed to them, responding to their material quality and formal confidence as they would to any other considered design object in the home. The interior designer’s ability to mix toggle finishes across plate colours gave the specification process a degree of creative freedom more commonly associated with bespoke joinery or furniture selection than with electrical fittings.

The integration of the Solis range within a broader smart home ecosystem also reinforced the home’s identity as a demonstration of what contemporary residential construction can achieve when specification decisions are made holistically rather than by category.

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Images: Supplied.