The winning room! ‘Modern Minimalist’ by Jamie and Hayden. As luck would have it they choose the theme that best suited their style and took out the challenge. Model is wearing Zambesi.

What a treat it was to asked back again to judge one of the Block NZ‘s favourite challenge – to style a set to be photographed for the flipside cover of Your Home and Garden Magazine.

Your Home and Garden features some of NZ’s most beautiful homes and spaces and it was contestants turn to try their hand at styling for a cover shot.

A very close second – Cat and Jeremy’s room was beautiful with a stunning colour palette but just missed out with not getting the brief quite right. It was almost to close to call! Model wears Kowtow

The Dulux Clifford Bay wall of Sarah and Minanne’s room was almost 3D, a rich and deep blue that matched so well with the honeyed tones of the Mr Bigglesworthy dresser. Model wears Twenty Seven Names

Brook and Mitch’s room was certainly dreamy with that beautiful soft pink Dulux half Kumutoto wall. Model wears Kate Sylvester

This year we got them to randomly choose a model’s name and that would them there ‘brief’ for the shoot.  The models were superbly decked out in four of New Zealands leading fashion designers which also refected the brief.  Dulux colours were also chosed to offset the ‘hero’ piece from each set.

From top to bottom of above images:

Jamie and Hayden | Modern Minimalist | Colour Dulux Okarito | Model wears Zambesi

Cat and Jeremy | Structured Organic | Colour Dulux Tauherenikau | Model (Lou) wears Kowtow

Sarah and Minanne | Retro Revival | Colour Dulux Clifford Bay | Model (Maddie) wears Twenty Seven Names

Brooke and Mitch | Dreamer |Colour Dulux Half Kumototo | Model (Maggie) wears Kate Sylvester

These teams certainly brought out there styling A-game and made it all very tough to decide the best image for the cover.  I had to make my decision based on:

+ Best use of the brief

+ How the final image looks as a cover shot

+ Styling and composition

My top two were Jamie and Hayden and Cat and Jeremy.  Both looked super duper as a cover but Jaime and Hayden nailed the brief 100%.  When I judged this challenge I had no prior knowledge of any back story of the contestants or challenges won to date so it was niffy when I got to watch in TV land time knowing that eventually Jamie and Hayden get a win!

The ‘set’ illusion of a cover shoot. A good magazine shot shoud make a reader feel like it’s part of a real home – this black and white (and grey) mix had the right elements of composition, styling and balance!

There was a lot of tooing and throwing with Cat and Jeremy – finding that just right angle can be the hardest part of a great photo

A different angle to the one used for the final image. Illusion is everything!

That dresser – they had made there angles too tight and left the ‘hero’ piece of furniture out of the limelight

Jamie and Hayden’s final set was perfectly put together and I can’t wait to see it published and proud on newstands across New Zealand!

Good luck to all the teams with your houses and we will all be watching with everything crossed to see the auction results.

All the good photos by Melanie Jenkins and Todd Eyre

All the other photos are by me on my iPhone!

To view the full episode (season 4 episode 24) see here