Colour me curious: Dulux Colour Awards 2025 winners announced

The Dulux Colour Awards hosted their 39th celebration at the National Gallery of Victoria. In all respects, it proved a colourful evening.

Showcasing the best of Australia and New Zealand’s design and architecture community, the recipients of the 2025 Dulux Colour Awards startled the judging panel with projects that pushed boundaries of style and genre.

As Andrea Lucena-Orr, Dulux colour and communications manager, said of this year’s lively collective of winners and nominees, “It never ceases to amaze us how conceptually courageous and strategically sophisticated the colour schematics are, year on year.”

Lucena-Orr was joined on the judging panel by a troupe of industry experts, including SJB director of interiors Andrew Parr, Edition Office director Kim Bridgland, Luchetti Krelle co-founder Rachel Luchetti, Kerstin Thompson Architects principal and founder Kerstin Thompson, and New Zealand-based at.space co-founder Alex McLeod.

Here is a closer look at the winners they selected across the top five categories at this year’s awards.

Australian Grand Prix

Winner: Richards Stanisich
Project: Sarah & Sebastian Armadale

Dulux Colour Awards 2025 Australian Grand Prix-winning project Sarah & Sebastian by Richards Stanisich. Photo: Lillie Thompson

The winner of the top prize for Australian architectural design is Melbourne suburb Armadale-based store of fine jewellery retailer Sarah & Sebastian, which also won the Commercial Interior award in the Workplace & Retail subcategory. Presenting the gorgeously moody shades of Delta Break green in a most striking fashion, its boldness is all the more remarkable within a shopping strip marked by high-end, conservative design tendencies. The vivid use of this deep, warm shade of algae is marvellously complemented by an array of reflective materials, proving elegant and enticing in equal measure.

The project lead at Richards Stanisich – senior interior designer Kate Riley – was there on the awards night to accept the top prize with colleague and fellow alum of Australian Design Review‘s 30UNDER30 program Nguyen Le.

“They were a really amazing client to work with,” Riley said of Sarah & Sebastian, “and I think, in this project, colour really helped us bring their DNA to light.”

Left to right: Kate Riley and Nguyen Le from Richards Stanisich accept the top Dulux Colour Award on 28 May 2025. Photo: Sophie Berrill

New Zealand Grand Prix

Winner: Pac Studio
Project: Lava Flow

Dulux Colour Awards 2025 New Zealand Grand Prix winner Lava Flow by Pac Studio. Photo: Samuel Hartnett

Earning the top gong for New Zealand, Pac Studio’s project Lava Flow uses the fiery shade Silo Park to winning effect. Occupying the opposite end of the spectrum from the rich, river-bed shades of the Australian winner, the earthy crimson on display here proves equally inviting and comforting – albeit radiating a markedly different temperature. The cool, soft shades of the pine flooring bloom beneath a dramatic, angular skylight, throwing light up toward the dense redness of the ceiling. An inspired pairing of volcanic hues and gentle reflective surfaces.

Single Residential Exterior

Winner: SSdH
Project: Dunstan

Dulux Colour Awards 2025 Single Residential Exterior winner Dunstan by SSdH. Photo: Pier Carthew

Offering a dreamy fusion of suburban nostalgia and neutral contemporary shading, the use of Yellow Varnish paint in SSdH’s Dunstan project is a high-impact exercise in restraint. Applied to the exposed wooden framework in this postwar housing estate of modest brick homes, the soft golden gloss of this buttery tint oozes late-summer daydreams of sunset meals or 8am coffee grounds. A taste of home that would find its place in any decade.

Residential Interior

Winner: Studio Doherty
Project: Elonera House

Dulux Colour Awards 2025 Residential Interior winner Elonera House by Studio Doherty. Photo: Sean Fennessey

The most fiercely contested category of this year’s competition, the Residential Interior award generated an energetic current of discussion and debate among the judges. Studio Doherty’s multitude of complementary shades in their Elonera House project demonstrate exquisite understanding of colour psychology, pairing shades that not only collect an abundance of natural light but generate a buoyant sense of spatial freedom. Positioning Calandre as the principal shade, the supporting presence of sand and slate blue achieves a remarkably warm atmosphere for such muted colours.

Commercial Interior, Public & Hospitality

Winner: Kennedy Nolan
Project: Melbourne Place

Dulux Colour Awards 2025 Commercial Interior, Public & Hospitality winner Melbourne Place by Kennedy Nolan. Photo: Anson Smart

The winner of the Commercial Interior award in the Public & Hospitality category was Kennedy Nolan’s mysterious and theatrical assortment of soil, chocolate and bronze shades for the jewel of Hyde Hotel’s Victoria operations, Melbourne Place. With plush, deep textures and soft shadows that fill the space with an underlying cinematic quality, guests are invited deep inside the multi-storey structure with the layered use of sultry red and purple shades.