An award-winning design practice creating unique colour concepts and artworks for the built environment
Lymesmith works with architects, designers and built environment professionals to unlock the power of colour for joy, connection and wellbeing.
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Colour is not just something we paint on walls because it looks pretty.
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
At Lymesmith, colour is so much more than surface decoration, it’s a powerful and strategic design element, one that reflects place, purpose, and people. Our work brings rigour and imagination to colour’s role in architecture, unlocking its potential to tell stories, amplify architecture, and engage communities.
colour creates connection
What We Do
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Colour Workshops & Webinars for Architects, Built Environment Professionals and Designers
Our colour design workshops & webinars are designed especially for architects and spatial designers who want to better understand and harness colour in the design of complex three-dimensional environments.
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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 architecture, public spaces, and community using beautiful, site-specific colour palettes that connect people and place.
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Trauma Informed Design, Design for Wellbeing
Colour is a crucial element in the design of places that support physical and mental health. The strategic use of colour can make buildings work better to support a range of physical and cognitive impairments. Lymesmith works with cross-disciplinary teams on a range of health and trauma-related projects.
We’ve worked with
Sonia van de Haar is an artist and colour designer with two decades of experience shaping the built environment. Blending a painter’s eye with an architect’s mind, she brings intelligent, vibrant colour and site-specific artworks into the spaces where people live, work, and thrive, transforming them into places that truly connect.
A passionate educator and speaker, Sonia regularly shares her expertise on architectural colour design. 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 intricate art of fresco painting at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India.
Meet Founder & Creative Director, Sonia van de Haar
lymesmith’s projects
Architectural
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Blacktown Animal Rehoming Centre (BARC)
Lymesmith created the colour scheme for this state of the art animal shelter. The colours selected reference local native birds flittering through the bush. In addition, each of the six buildings is delineated by the colours of a unique ‘native bird ambassador’.
2025 Better Future World Design Awards – Gold- Architecture – Public Utility
2025 Better Future Australian Design Awards – Silver- Architecture – Public and Institutional
2025 Better Future GOV Design Awards – Gold – Architecture – Public Utility
2025 Australian Interior Design Awards – Shortlist – Public Design
2024 Sustainable Building Awards – Shortlist – Public Buildings
2024 Better Future Sydney Design Awards – Silver – Architecture – Public and Institutional
2024 World Architecture Festival – Finalist – Completed Buildings, Civic & Community
2024 ArchitectureAU Award for Social Impact – Shortlist
2024 Dulux Colour Awards – Finalist – Commercial and Multi Residential Exterior – Lymesmith in association with Sam Crawford Architects
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Kidman 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, Balmain
An iconic heritage home reimagined with colour that serves both form and atmosphere. Collaborating with Studio Johnston Architects, Lymesmith advised on the colour and material palette for the 1972 Roy Grounds-designed residence perched over the Parramatta River, 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, Lymesmith helped transform a Bondi foreshore utility building into a quietly elegant landmark. By anchoring a horizon line that mirrors Bondi Beach’s vast expanse, the design uses building materials and finishes that all change in some way at the horizon line, giving a cohesive and calm solidity to the building.
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
murals
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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
Working with Core Collective and Christopher Clinton Architects, and SBLA Studio, Lymesmith developed a Trauma Informed colour and material palette for 2 prototype houses for the Hobarts Women Shelter that closely link the houses to their site.
Shortlisted - 2024 Architecture Au, Social Impact Awards
Commendation - 2025 Interior Architecture, Tasmanian Architecture Awards
work with us
We bring 20+ years of colour expertise to every brief, working closely with architects, interior and landscape designers, developers, and government agencies to deliver colour strategies, site-specific artworks, and workshops that bring places to life.