Creating cohesion on The Block 2024: Connecting interior and exterior materials

Building a house is a project that comes with myriad challenges. One of them is creating a seamless flow from a home’s stunning exterior to liveable, comfortable and beautiful interior spaces. Homes that fail to achieve this can end up feeling disjointed and confused.

The key is to connect the exterior and interior spaces. But how? The teams on The Block 2024 have been exploring this challenge and have devised some clever, effective solutions involving exterior cladding. Architect from The Block, Julian Brenchley, joins us to explain exactly how The Block houses – including one with trending Board and Batten cladding – became a seamless whole.

Setting your design intent

Setting a design intent is about establishing a clear vision for how you want your home to look and feel. Start by identifying your style and the atmosphere you want to create, whether it’s for a new build, house extension or external rejuvenation such as cladding over brick.

To carry the vision from inside to outside or vice versa it’s all about maintaining cohesive materials, colour palettes and architectural elements. For example, if you love Modern Farmhouse, use board and batten cladding on the exterior and mirror that texture indoors with vertical joint panels or rustic wood finishes. Consistency creates harmony and flow, ensuring that the entire home feels unified.

Of course, achieving cohesion between exterior and interior materials can be tricky due to different performance needs required of materials. Outdoor materials must withstand weather conditions, while indoor materials prioritise comfort and durability.

It makes sense to choose different but similar finishes, or to carry exterior finishes inside, for example, by selecting weather-resistant exterior cladding that complements an interior accent wall. This is what The Block houses did extremely successfully.

Let’s examine House 1 and House 3 from The Block 2024, which embody this beautifully.

House 3: Seamless transition from outside to inside

Key materials: Hardie™ Oblique™ Cladding, Axon™ Cladding

Best friends Ricky and Haydn took on House 3 on The Block 2024. It's a lightweight and low-lying design with floor to ceiling windows that fill rooms with light and connect indoors with outdoors. A bright coloured front door with a feature handle is an eye-catching addition to the home’s entrance.

For exterior cladding, the team chose Hardie™ Oblique™ Cladding in alternating board widths that evoke wood panelling, which was used both internally and externally in this home.

“It was a really interesting concept the boys came up with,” says The Block architect Julian Brenchley. “Their house was clad in Hardie™ Oblique™ Cladding, and to bring it inside is a fun way to emphasise the outside.”

Hardie™ Oblique™ Cladding carried through into the living and dining rooms offers a clean, monochromatic palette that ensures a feeling of contemporary comfort, with hints of bold colour in paint, furniture and greenery injecting a sense of playfulness, nostalgia and freedom.

And that’s not the only place cladding was used internally – they chose to continue the vertical theme with Axon™ Cladding in the mezzanine ensuite and laundry: Hardie™ fibre cement is resistant to damage from moisture, making it an ideal choice for wet areas such as a laundries, kitchens and bathrooms (excluding shower recesses).

House 1: Board and Batten cladding translates effortlessly inside

Key materials: Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding, Hardie™ Axent™ Trim, Hardie™ Groove Lining, Axon™ Cladding

After entering the The Block 2024 competition late to replace Jesse and Paige, Maddy and Charlotte wasted no time in putting their stamp on House 1.

The latest board and batten exterior cladding trend is to adopt a mixture of texture and profiles. “Board and batten is a really easy pattern to create a really unique Australian look,” says architect Julian Brenchley. “It can lend itself to rural, coastal or urban, depending on how you do it; it's a fantastic style and really, really versatile.” In fact, we’ve seen it appear on The Block houses for three seasons now!

House 1 brings the embedded sand-like texture of Hardie™ Fine Texture Cladding against the smooth Hardie™ Axent™ Trim battens. The close batten spacing creates a highly detailed aesthetic for a beautiful, craftsmanship-look finish. The dark, monochromatic colour palette also puts an ultra-modern twist on the batten and board exterior for striking curb-appeal.

The team carried the look inside by incorporating Hardie™ Groove Lining in the master suite. This durable fibre cement VJ sheet panel gives the look of tongue and groove timber with the durability of fibre cement, carrying through the Board and Batten cladding impression with ease.

To add that extra layer of drama and detail to their interiors, Maddy and Charlotte also used Axon™ Cladding in the rumpus room and kids’ bedroom via a dynamic green feature wall. The clean vertical lines of Axon™ Cladding bought a fresh feel to this super cute and modern kids’ bedroom.

Cohesive mixed cladding: House 4

A Mid-Century Modern marvel with a coastal twist, The Block House 4 is a showcase for exterior cladding, with no less than four different kinds on the exterior elegantly blending into a cohesive whole. Naturally, Kylie and Brad extended use of cladding inside, with Hardie™ Groove Lining chosen for their layered mezzanine ensuite. The elegant, uniform panels are free of knots and are resistant to shrinking and swelling with moisture, making it a great choice for bathrooms.

Why use Hardie™ fibre cement in home interiors and exteriors?

According to Julian Brenchley, there are four main reasons.

1. Easy to install: Hardie™ fibre cement helps to save time, cost and complexity in the building process. It is gun-nailable and can be moved around the site, and there is no need for specialist trades, reducing complexity onsite.

2. Helps save costs: Products are available in a range of sizes to fit common wall frames, helping to reduce wastage and cutting on-site, saving time and costs.

3. Ready to paint: James Hardie’s range of fibre cement cladding products and are pre-sealed or pre-primed and ready to paint in any colour.

4. It’s durable: Engineered to endure, Hardie™ fibre cement is fire and rot resistant and resistant to moisture damage and termite damage. It is also impact resistant. “That sounds to me like the exact product you want in your house when you’ve got kids running past with a soccer ball!” adds Julian.