Interior designer Gold Coast: Luxxe Interiors

Luxxe Interiors is an interior designer Gold Coast homeowners bring in when the project is a whole house rather than a room. The studio is based at Broadbeach and has designed homes across the coast since 2019. Principal designer Tammy Brazel holds a Bachelor's Degree in Design and spent eight years in residential interiors before founding the practice. She grew up in Runaway Bay, which matters more than a biography line usually does. She has spent her life around the canal homes and towers this studio now works on.

This page is for people planning something substantial. A rebuild on a north facing canal block. A new build at Carrara that needs its interiors resolved before the slab goes down. A Broadbeach apartment that has to feel like a home instead of a display suite. Below is what the service covers, how a project runs, what it costs, and the questions worth asking any studio before you sign.

Gold Coast projects you can look at

Most studios list suburbs. Fewer can show you the houses. Ten Gold Coast projects are published on this site, and you can walk through each one before you ever call.

Three of them are on the Sovereign Islands. Sovereign Islands I is sculptural stone modernism, Sovereign Islands II is a softer neoclassical scheme, and Sovereign Islands III is a waterfront organic interior. They share a studio and almost nothing else, which is the point. A designer with one look gives every client the same house.

The rest cover the coast fairly evenly. Broadbeach I is a metropolitan deco apartment interior and Broadbeach II is quieter and more sculptural. Paradise Point runs to modern French glamour. Mermaid Waters is soft Mediterranean. Helensvale is refined warm minimalism, Worongary is contemporary monochrome, and Carrara is a warm sculptural new build.

The studio also works well beyond the coast, including the interiors of Duddingston House in Edinburgh. That range matters to you for one reason. It shows the process holds up when the site is not around the corner.

Designing for how the Gold Coast actually behaves

Coastal design gets treated as a colour palette. It is really a set of constraints, and they are unforgiving here.

Orientation comes first. A canal block gives you water on one side and a neighbour close on the other, so the view and the light rarely arrive from the same direction. An east facing living room is glorious at seven in the morning and difficult by two in the afternoon. That is a planning decision, not a curtain decision, and it has to be made before walls are fixed.

Then there is salt. Anything within a few streets of open water lives in a corrosive environment. Hardware, tapware, external joinery and light fittings all need to be specified for it. The finish that looks perfect in a Brisbane showroom can pit within two years on a Sovereign Islands terrace. This is where a specification document earns its cost.

Glare is the third one, and the one most often missed. Water reflects hard light up into a room from below, which no standard window treatment is designed for. It changes how you place reflective stone, how you choose a floor, and where a television can realistically go.

Apartment work carries its own rules. In a Broadbeach or Surfers Paradise tower the structure is fixed. The services sit where the builder left them, and the body corporate has views about wet area waterproofing. Design in a tower is mostly the art of getting a great deal out of a shell you cannot move. There is more on that in our guide to renovation and new build interiors.

What the studio designs

Luxxe Interiors is a residential practice, so the work stays focused on homes:

• Whole home interior design, from spatial planning through to final styling
• Kitchen, bathroom and laundry design, resolved down to drawer internals
• Home cinema and bar design
• Renovations, including full gut rebuilds
• New builds, working alongside your architect and builder
• Drafting, so your builder prices from documents rather than conversations
• 3D renders, with virtual reality walkthroughs available when a project calls for it
• Furniture, window treatments, lighting, art and objects

The service works best when the studio is engaged early. Decisions made in the first fortnight of design echo all the way to the styling day, and they are cheap to change at that point. Single space projects are welcome as well, usually a kitchen that has stopped working or a bathroom that was never right.

If you are selling rather than staying, property styling on the Gold Coast is a different service with different economics, and that page explains it properly.

How a project runs

Every project starts with a consultation, on site for Gold Coast work. We walk the house, define the brief, and talk about budget honestly and early. A design you cannot afford to build is a folder of expensive paper.

1. Concept. Spatial planning, the feel of the house, and a material direction. The big moves get decided here: walls, layouts, how rooms relate to the water and the light.

2. Design development. The concept becomes specific. Renders, and a VR walkthrough if you want one, let you test the rooms while changes still cost nothing.

3. Documentation. Drawings, schedules and specifications your builder can price line by line. Every tile, tap and handle identified, so nothing gets decided on the fly in a dusty hallway.

4. Procurement and build support. Orders placed, lead times managed, builder questions answered, site checks at the moments that matter.

5. Styling. Furniture, window treatments, lighting and art, which is the layer that makes a finished build feel like a home rather than a handover.

On timing, honesty beats optimism. A single room can move through design in weeks. A whole house takes months before a builder should be pricing it, and custom furniture often has longer lead times than the joinery. If there is a date that matters to you, say so at the first meeting and the program gets built around it.

How fees work

Australian studios generally charge one of three ways. Hourly, a fixed fee for a defined scope, or a percentage of build cost. Hourly suits small advisory work but makes budgeting nervous because the meter never stops. Percentage models quietly reward a bigger build cost, which is an odd incentive to introduce into your own project.

Luxxe Interiors quotes a fixed design fee for a defined scope after the initial consultation. You know what the design phase costs before you commit to it. Product and construction budgets stay separate and stay yours, and the documentation exists partly to protect them, because builders price accurately from resolved drawings. Our page on what an interior designer costs goes through the numbers in more detail.

Whoever you engage, ask three things: what deliverables the fee buys, who owns the drawings, and how trade discounts are handled. The answers tell you most of what you need to know about a studio.

Worth knowing before you start

Two figures are useful context for anyone building here this year.

The Gold Coast is now a city of 691,230 people, according to the ABS estimated resident population for 2025 (Gold Coast City community profile). Growth on that scale keeps good trades permanently busy, and busy builders price defensively against vague drawings. Resolved documentation is not a nicety in this market. It is how your project competes for a good builder's attention.

Nationally, the value of residential building approved rose 15.1 per cent to $11.75 billion in June 2026 alone (ABS Building Approvals, June 2026). More money is chasing the same trades and the same lead times than at almost any point in the last decade. Projects that arrive with loose drawings go to the back of the queue.

Choosing an interior designer on the Gold Coast

Ask to see finished projects rather than concept boards. Renders are a design tool, but completed rooms show whether a studio can carry an idea through trades, lead times and the compromises of a real build.

Ask who actually does the design work. At Luxxe Interiors the person who walks your house at the first consultation is the person who designs it. In a larger firm that is often not the case, and it is a fair question to put to anyone.

Ask how documentation is handled, because the drawings are where the result is protected. Loose documentation gets improvised on site, and improvisation at this level of spend is expensive.

Finally, ask how the studio talks about money. Any designer who avoids the budget conversation until the concept is approved is saving a hard discussion for the worst possible moment.

Judge every Gold Coast interior designer against that list, this one included. It is a short interview and it will tell you more than an afternoon of scrolling portfolios.

Frequently asked questions

How much does an interior designer cost on the Gold Coast?

It depends on scope. Gold Coast designers typically charge hourly for small advisory work and fixed fees for renovations and new builds. Some charge a percentage of build cost on larger projects. The fee should buy defined deliverables: concepts, renders, documentation and selections. Luxxe Interiors quotes a fixed design fee for a defined scope after an initial consultation, so the cost of the design phase is known before it starts.

Do you work on apartments as well as houses?

Yes. Broadbeach I and Broadbeach II are both apartment interiors. Tower work has its own constraints. The structure and services are fixed, and the body corporate has a say in wet area work. So the design effort goes into getting the most out of a shell that cannot move.

Which Gold Coast suburbs do you work in?

Published projects cover the Sovereign Islands, Broadbeach, Paradise Point, Mermaid Waters, Helensvale, Worongary and Carrara, and the studio is based at Broadbeach. If your suburb is not on that list it changes nothing. Those are simply the streets where this kind of project has tended to land.

Should I hire an interior designer or a decorator?

A decorator works with the finished shell: furniture, fabrics, colour and styling. An interior designer works on the shell itself, planning spaces, documenting joinery and finishes, and coordinating with your builder. If walls, wet areas or cabinetry are changing, decoration alone will not get you there.

How early should I engage a designer on a new build?

Before the plans are locked. The choices that matter most, such as where the kitchen sits relative to the water and how the light enters the living space, are architectural decisions. Once the slab is poured, an interior designer is working around problems that were free to solve six months earlier.

Can I see the design before I commit to building it?

Yes. Every major space can be produced as a 3D render. On projects that call for it, a virtual reality walkthrough lets you move through the design at eye height. You check proportions, clearances and sightlines before anything is ordered. Revisions are close to free on screen. They are not free during stone templating.