Inside a family home where nature shapes every room, White Rock by Matters + Made is a coastal sanctuary designed around family life, material richness and a deep connection to its Avalon Beach setting. Located between Avalon and Whale Beach, the home reflects the relaxed rhythm of Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
Owned by Garth Elliot, founder of ZETR, White Rock was shaped through a highly personal design and build process. Having lived in the original house for many years, the family understood the site intimately – its generous scale, outlooks, gardens and potential to become something more attuned to their needs.
Designed by Matters + Made, inside a family home where nature shapes every room is an exercise in balancing abundance with calm. Chloe Matters approached the project with an understanding not only of the site but of the family itself, creating spaces that feel energetic, joyful and grounded. The result is a home that embraces bold materiality while remaining practical for everyday living.
From the entry, nature is brought into direct focus. A large rock and tree frame the arrival experience, setting the tone for a house where the landscape is never treated as separate from the interior. The plan unfolds from the outdoor terrace and swimming pool into the living, dining and kitchen areas, creating an easy connection between gathering spaces and the garden beyond.
At the rear, inside a family home where nature shapes every room is most clearly expressed through the relationship between the kitchen and existing garden. By retaining the lower level of the garden at the same height as the kitchen bench, the design creates the feeling of a sunken lounge immersed in greenery. Materiality is central to the home’s character. Stones, metals and richly detailed tiles are layered with timber, limewash paint and leather, creating a palette that feels tactile and earthy. These contrasts bring depth to the interiors without overwhelming them, allowing the home to feel refined yet lived in.
One of the most defining gestures is the boulder and tree placed within the centre of the plan. Initially an ambitious idea, it became a natural anchor for the home, reinforcing the project’s sense of connection to landscape. Inside a family home where nature shapes every room, this element turns the interior into a living environment rather than a sealed enclosure.
The dining area continues this sense of personal expression. Designed by Elliot, the 12-seat table combines stainless steel, acrylic, walnut and Ceppo Rosa marble, becoming both a functional centrepiece and a reflection of the home’s hands-on making process.
Inside a family home where nature shapes every room, White Rock captures the achievement of building something truly personal. Full of memory, energy and calm, it is a family home shaped by friendship, trust and a shared belief in the power of design to support everyday life. 0:00 - Introduction To Inside a Family Home Where Nature Shapes Every Room 1:33 - Creating A Home Of Calm And Abundance 3:05 - Blurring The Boundaries Between Interior And Exterior 4:23 - Layering Materials To Create A Unique Identity 6:12 - A Family Home Built For Connection
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Video Summary
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Garth Elliott and designer Chloe Matters showcase \"White Rock,\" a custom-built family home in Avalon Beach, Sydney. The project emphasizes a seamless connection between indoor and outdoor living, blending bold architectural features with grounding, earthy materials to create a functional yet exciting sanctuary for a large family.
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One of the best things about being so involved with
building and designing your own home is that feeling of achievement.
It always felt like I was working at someone else's house, you know, because
sometimes you look around and you're like, wow, I can't believe we've actually done this
and this is ours. And that feeling of achievement is immense.
And you get that every time you walk through the door.
I'm Garth Elliott, the founder of Zeta and this is our home, White Rock.
The house is located in Avalon Beach, halfway between Avalon and Whale Beach.
It's a very laid back sort of lifestyle in this part of Sydney.
It's very much coastally focused, early mornings, very green.
And, you know, we spend most of our time on the water in the ocean
and we wanted the house to reflect that sort of lifestyle.
When we originally bought the house, we loved the space.
It's a huge block, it's over a thousand square metres.
We lived in it for a really long time, so it gave us a bit of an understanding of,
I suppose, what we wanted to do and what we needed as a large family.
We loved how much greenery there was and the views and the outlooks.
And I suppose that gave us something to really build on
when we're looking to undertake a rebuild of the house.
I'm Chloe Matters, the founder of Matters and Made and we were the designers on White Rock.
I met Garth on a job site 13 years ago and we quickly became friends.
I would consider them my best friends.
I'm the godparents to their kids, they're the godparents to my kids, so
we know each other pretty well.
Having spent so much time with the family and being so
enmeshed with the original space, it did really give me a better understanding
of how I wanted to push the boundaries of this space.
It was about creating something that felt exciting and full of abundance and energy,
but also really grounding and calming that was functional for a family to live in all the time.
For the original design brief, I really didn't know exactly what I wanted,
which made Chloe's life very hard.
I think coming from a construction background and also coming from a design background,
you have so many ideas that it's really hard to focus on one particular concept for your project.
So having Chloe's experience was really crucial to, I suppose, trying to cipher what I was thinking.
Chloe has a very good eye for keeping things balanced in a way.
As you walk through the front door, it's framed with a beautiful rock and a tree,
which sort of connects your space to the outdoor areas.
You have a swimming pool, outdoor terrace that flows into a living room,
that flows into a dining room, and then the kitchen.
Then you have your powder room, which is nice and moody.
Then going upstairs, you have all your bedroom levels.
So you've got your bathroom, kids rooms, and master suite.
One of the things we wanted to retain for the rear of the house was
the connection to the existing gardens.
To achieve that, we essentially left the bottom level of the garden,
which worked out to be the same RL height as the kitchen bench.
I suppose it almost feels like you're sitting in a big sunken lounge room in a way.
To have the back of the house open and then having the kids playing right there is super cool.
We used a lot of stones, mixed stones together, mixed metals together, and interesting tiles.
And then we really tried to counterbalance that and ground the space
with timbers, lime wash paints, and leathers to sort of soften
and bring a sort of earthy tone to the space.
When we were designing the floor plan for this space,
we had a empty space in the middle of the zone, which was perfectly framed by all of our doors.
And I thought this is going to be the best space for a big boulder and a tree.
Garth and Alyssa were not so keen on the idea,
and this is somewhere where I probably pushed them out of their comfort zone.
I was like, look, guys, I'm plumbing for it.
If you decide you want it, we can work with it then.
And as soon as the space opened up, they realised the rock was going to be the feature.
We've got around a 12-seat dining table, which is set into the banquet seating.
I designed the table, which is made up of a stainless steel
kind of decorative chassis with a random overlay finish,
two acrylic tubes which support the chassis,
and then a walnut and chepo rosa marble top, which is done in segments.
It's a really unique piece, and I'd probably never do one again.
It took so much time to build, so much time to put together.
A challenging piece to make, but definitely one of the show pieces of the house.
So the feeling that we want people to feel when they walk into this space
is that it is a connected sanctuary.
Full of abundance, full of joy, full of memories and laughter.
Jean, what's your favourite part?
What about the table?
You like the table, do you Jean? Yeah, oh good.
Do you know Dad made that?
Yeah.
Yeah, is that why you like it? Yeah, cool.
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