The Northern Beaches house of Haydenshapes Surfboards founders Hayden and Danielle Cox highlights everything they love about Palm Beach.

‘It’s a location that people love to come to vacation in, so creating a home that was designed for entertaining and relaxation was important,’ says Hayden.

The couple purchased the existing 1950s house on site back in 2020, which they lived in for 12 months before renovating.

‘Through this period we experienced the four seasons, understanding the light throughout the day and which parts of the property we gravitated towards in certain times of the day and even the year,’ says Hayden.

Their priorities became connecting the house to the outdoors by framing views and introducing flat terracing across the steep site wherever possible.

‘This poses the design challenge of creating a home that, regardless of the steepness, still feels connected and easily accessible,’ says Hayden.

‘We didn’t want there to be areas or parts of the home that felt out of reach or were rarely used, so thoughtful and considered landscaping and terracing design was a critical element of creating a natural flow between all the main living, entertainment areas and bedrooms.’

The aesthetic vision was that of a luxurious beach resort, taking full advantage of the sundrenched north-facing site to inspire the feeling of an ‘endless summer.’

The initial plan was to maintain much of the original house, however, ‘time really hadn’t been kind to the structural integrity and foundations, so 95 percent of it needed to be rebuilt,’ says Hayden.

Works were mostly contained to the previous footprint, but the internal layout was significantly reworked to better leverage sunlight, views, and connections to the garden, along with some extensions to include a garage and pool.

‘We incorporated more open-plan concepts into the design from the living and dining, through to the primary bedrooms and even the entertainment room. As the build progressed, walls and doors were continuously deleted along the way to really enhance the openness of each space,’ says Hayden.

The material palette was selected to highlight the natural beauty of the site, and softly underpin the young family’s busy life.

Hayden explains, ‘I think there’s a real beauty in thoughtfully framing that rather than overcomplicating the colour palette or design… People come to the beach to feel calm and relaxed, and we wanted to create that feeling of being perched on the sand dunes staring out at the ocean.’

Materials such as travertine plaster subtly shift in tone throughout the day, and work in harmony with the home’s lighting design.

‘On the Pittwater side, you’ll find a more refined texture that is a much more beige in colour which influenced our plaster finishing throughout the bedrooms and main living. Then there is the Palm Beach ocean side sand which is a grittier sandstone texture and quite a lot deeper in colour.’

Luxurious finishes include custom metal, hand blown glass, a suspended cylindrical stone air extraction unit made of venus white marble, resin furniture made by Hayden in collaboration with SP01, and custom upcycled concrete fixtures made in collaboration with Concrete Bespoke.

‘These were created with a custom developed material mix incorporating surfboard foam and fiberglass waste captured in our Haydenshapes manufacturing line,’ says Hayden of the concrete composition. ‘We’d been working with this material on different retail and art projects over the past few years, so including it within the design of our personal home was a cool moment.’

Hayden and Danielle feel very attached to their home as both the owners and designers, visiting Beaches Building on site 3-4 times a week over the three and a half year renovation.

The journey was well worth the wait, with regular beach swims and constant ocean views now an everyday reality for the young family.

‘Living here is like being on holidays, and that’s really what we set out to achieve,’ says Hayden. ‘You don’t really want to leave.’