Cape Town Home Blends Beauty, Memory, and Family Life
This Cape Town home is a living, breathing extension of family life — where every corner tells a story, every object holds meaning and the line between indoors and out is softly, elegantly blurred.
Step inside architectural designer Zeanne Duminy’s Cape Town abode and you immediately sense that this is no ordinary designer’s home. It’s intimate, soulful and quietly profound — a space layered with memory, shaped by time and lovingly in flux. ‘A home should never be stagnant,’ says Zeanne. ‘We grow and live, and so should our spaces.’
She shares the home with her husband, their two young sons, a Weimaraner named Mana, a budgie, a bunny and a few koi — a full and joyful household — though acquiring the home was anything but impulsive. ‘We wrote to the original owner for years,’ she recalls, ‘asking her not to forget us when she was ready to sell. When the call finally came, it felt like fate.’
The house had good bones and, more importantly, good energy — something Zeanne believes is a vital element to a home. The renovation, though substantial, was guided less by rigid plans and more by intuition, evolving gently alongside the family’s needs. Her only steadfast requirements? That it be classic, comfortable and filled with light. The rest was left to unfold organically. ‘I always start with a brief, with mood boards and ideas, but I let things change. Life is never static — why should your home be?'
Natural light became the cornerstone. Despite its modest footprint, the home feels expansive; its rooms spilling effortlessly into each other and into the outdoors. Courtyards are interspersed throughout the structure — one outside the study built around a magnolia tree, another beside the bathroom featuring an outdoor shower — and each offers a quiet, luminous pause. ‘Light is everything,’ she says. ‘It’s the holy grail. We live in this beautiful, tree-filled city – why wouldn’t you open up to that?’
The garden, in collaboration with Fatima Bernadine of Lavender Blue Landscaping, further blurs the line between indoors and out. ‘It’s not large, but it’s truly another room,’ says Zeanne. ‘You see it from every part of the house — it’s held by the architecture.’ Clipped and structured, it’s purposefully robust and designed to handle bounding boys and flying footballs. ‘I wanted it to be practical and beautiful, and that’s exactly what Fatima delivered.’
A neutral interior of creams, soft whites and sandy tones creates a calm canvas for daily life, a quiet antidote to the visual intensity of Zeanne’s work. ‘I love colour, and I respect it, but I live in a neutral world. It helps me focus,’ she says. ‘I’m drawn to texture over tone — though leopard print is definitely neutral in my book’.
Floors become a language of their own in this layered home. From warm timber to monochrome checkerboard tiles, each surface tells a story. ‘Different flooring gives each room its own atmosphere, its own "rug",’ Zeanne says. Inspiration for the checkerboard came from a trip to Sri Lanka over a decade ago, where she discovered the work of architect Geoffrey Bawa. ‘That trip shifted something in me.
My love for black-and-white floors and natural materials started there and never really left.’ Her long-time affinity for Oggie flooring is woven into the story too — a professional constant that now feels personal. ‘Nick started the brand around the time I started my career. I can walk into a room, smell those floors, and feel at home.’
As expressive as the architecture and finishes are, it’s the deeply personal objects that give the home its unmistakable soul. A large black unit in the study, made by her father as a wedding gift to her mother, has lived in every home Zeanne’s occupied. Her prized collection of porcelain vessels (made from gauze bandages and surgical materials, also by her father) is now displayed with reverence in the white lounge. ‘That space was created for them,’ she says. ‘They’d been tucked away for years. Now they have pride of place.’
Nearly every item in the home has a story — art acquired directly from the artists, ceramics gifted over time, sentimental pieces slowly layered in. ‘It’s not about trends. It’s about meaning,’ she reflects. ‘My boys know where everything comes from, the stories behind the pieces. It might look curated, but it’s absolutely lived-in. They’ve grown up watching me shift furniture and reimagine spaces. They’ve become little designers without even knowing it.
Nowhere is this family-first approach more evident than in the kitchen. Though compact, it functions as the true heart of the home. ‘I wanted a big island — and I got one,’ Zeanne laughs. ‘It’s where we cook, where we serve, where we sit. It’s multifunctional, the stage for our daily life.’ Just off it sits a large timber table set on checkerboard tiles, flanked by leafy outlooks and black steel framed windows. ‘We do everything there — homework, coffee, entertaining. It’s like a greenhouse with all the plants. There’s always something alive.’
Lighting, like everything else, is handled with quiet intention. In this regard, Zeanne favours repetition — multiple pendants, soft linen lampshades, overlapping glows. ‘Lighting changes a mood, it can alter a room entirely,’ she says. ‘I’ve done what I could for now, but I always have more ideas. I adore my team — they bring ideas to life. I’m forever tweaking things.’
Despite the patina, the porcelain and the inherited objects, this isn’t a home caught in the past; it is resolutely present. ‘I design for families, not for designers,’ she says. ‘This home might look refined, but it’s real. It’s ours. It works.’
As day fades into night and the courtyards light up with lantern like warmth, there’s a hush... The glow of something meaningful, a sense that this house is more than just beautiful. It is, as Zeanne puts it, ‘Our heart, our home, our heaven.’
Text by Lynette Botha