LYMESMITH IS AN award-winning design STUDIO creating unique colour concepts & artworks for the built environment
Lymesmith collaborates
… with architects, spatial designers and diverse clients to unlock the power of colour in their projects.
USING colour to AMPLIFY ARCHITECTURE, create joy, ENHANCE connection and wellbeing, LYMESMITH makeS buildings better for people.
colour creates connection
At Lymesmith, colour is so much more than surface decoration, it’s a powerful and strategic tool that can amplify and challenge architectural ideas.
Colour has the power to enhance connection to place; to amplify or camouflage the built form; to signify cultural and historical connections; to reinforce way-finding strategies; to create new identities and regenerate places in transition.
Lymesmith brings rigour & imagination to colour’s role in architecture, unlocking its potential to tell stories, engage communities & connect to Country.
What We Do
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Architectural Colour Design
We collaborate with architects, designers, and private clients to design intelligent, intentional colour and material palettes to amplify architecture, enhance engagement, and support wellbeing.
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Site Specific Mural Commissions
Lymesmith murals are unique artworks designed to enhance buildings and public spaces. They generate community connection and celebrate place.
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Trauma Informed Design, Design for Wellbeing
Effective colour design is crucial for environments that support physical and mental health. Lymesmith works with cross-disciplinary teams on a range of health care and trauma-related projects.
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Colour Workshops for Built Environment Professionals
Lymesmith’s colour design workshops and webinars are designed for architects and spatial designers who want to understand, and use colour more effectively.
Founder & Creative Director, Sonia van de Haar
Sonia van de Haar is an artist and architectural colour designer with two decades of experience shaping the built environment. Blending a painter’s eye with an architect’s mind, she brings an intelligent, site-specific approach to the design of her artworks and colour palettes, to transform spaces where people live and work, into places of connection.
A passionate educator and speaker, Sonia regularly shares her expertise on architectural colour design via her professional courses in colour.
Her love for colour is rooted in a rich and varied creative journey, from studying painting at the School of Art and Design ANU, to architecture at the University of NSW, to learning the art of fresco painting at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India.
CLIENTS & COLLABORATORS
SELECTED Architectural PROJECTS
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BARC Animal Rehoming Centre
Lymesmith created the colour scheme for this state of the art animal shelter. The colour palette references local native birds. Each of the six buildings is delineated by the colours of a unique ‘native bird ambassador’.
2024 Dulux Colour Awards – Finalist – Commercial and Multi Residential Exterior
2025 Better Future World Design Awards – Gold – Public Utility
2025 Australian Interior Design Awards – Shortlist – Public Design
2024 World Architecture Festival – Finalist – Completed Buildings, Civic & Community
2024 ArchitectureAU Award for Social Impact – Shortlist
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Kidman Lane House
A collaboration with Plus Minus Design, the deliberate use of colour in Kidman Lane animates and amplifies spatial character, notably reinforcing the radically open ground floor plan with a ribbon of colour that makes explicit that the living space is not just the interior space but in fact encompasses the entire block.
2024 Houses Awards - Commendation - New House under 200 square meters
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Sir Roy Grounds House
This iconic 1972 Roy Grounds-designed residence reinvigorated with colour to amplify both form and atmosphere was a collaboration with Studio Johnston Architects. Lymesmith advised on the colour and material palette, providing warmth and depth while honouring its original character.
Winner - AIA NSW Award, Winner Residential Architecture - Houses (Alts + Adds)
Winner - AIA NSW Award, Commendation Heritage
Winner - Houses Awards, Houses in a Heritage Setting
Winner - Houses Awards, Commendation Houses Alts and Adds over 200m2
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North Bondi Amenities
Working alongside Sam Crawford Architects, North Bondi public amenities is a quietly elegant landmark. Lymesmith’s material arrangement artfully anchors the building in place.
Winner - Dulux Colour Awards, Grand Prix
Winner - Dulux Colour Awards, Commercial Exterior
Winner - Australian Institute of Architects National Award, Small Project Architecture
Winner - AIA NSW, Small Project Architecture
Winner - AIA NSW, Commendation for Public Architecture
SELECTED mural PROJECTS
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Between Mountains
Lymesmith’s 7 storey high mural has transformed a nondescript light well in the centre of an apartment building. The enormous scale of the mural and its rich and complex tapestry of colour uplifts the public circulation spaces, with a beautiful artwork that is constantly evolving with diurnal and seasonal light effects.
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Arc Angel Mural
Commissioned by Wilson Street resident Laurel Hixon, Arc Angel is a joyful gesture to the local community, a colourful, soaring mural designed to uplift, surprise, and delight. This streetscape intervention brings art to everyday life, transforming a terrace house wall into a shared moment of wonder amongst the community.
Heritage Winner - 2023 Resene Colour Award
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CC Babcoq Mural
A playful mural with coastal undertones, Rockpool was created for C.C. Babcoq, the beloved Cronulla rotisserie and cocktail bar designed by Tom Mark Henry. Long-time collaborator Harry Kapoulas commissioned Lymesmith to develop a piece that would echo the oceanic surroundings while harmonising with the venue’s sophisticated palette.
Winner - 2019 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards UK
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Hanging Garden Mural
Commissioned by Neeson Murcutt, this 15-metre ceramic mural wraps around the swimming pool of a Bronte home nestled into sandstone and garden. Rising like a reimagined ruin, the architecture invites a rich conversation between form, site and surface. Lymesmith’s mural builds on that dialogue, demonstrating a robust materiality and revelling in the physicality of its site.
Winner - 2018 CODAaward
Trauma-Informed Design
Hobart Women’s Shelter
Working with Core Collective and Christopher Clinton Architects, and SBLA Studio, Lymesmith developed a Trauma Informed approach to colour and materiality for prototype houses for the Hobarts Women Shelter.
Shortlisted - 2024 Architecture Au, Social Impact Awards
Commendation - 2025 Interior Architecture, Tasmanian Architecture Awards
Trauma Informed Design shares characteristics with Biophilic Design, with colour and materials playing a central role in design for good health and well-being.
“There’s lots of places to pause in this house... I could never stop before. So, I’m so much slower paced.”
“My first favourite part of the house, is the ‘corner, not corner’. …it’s round, and it fits on your back perfectly, so you can just slide around it, and I really like it. It’s not sharp, and you can’t whack into it. And it’s another one of those very sensory things for me.“
“When I walked in here without any of my stuff, it felt homely. I love everything about it.”
let’s collaborate
Lymesmith brings 20+ years of design expertise to every brief, working collaboratively with architects, interior and landscape designers/architects, builders, developers, private clients and government agencies to deliver intelligent colour strategies and site-specific artworks to improve the built environment.
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