Open House Perth 2025: A Curated Look at This Year's Must-See Gems

When Open House Perth opens its doors for the 2025 weekend, the city trades its usual sense of privacy for a citywide invitation. For two days, residential addresses, working studios, and civic landmarks across the metropolitan area welcome visitors who want to understand how Perth's built environment is shifting, restoring, and reimagining itself. Architects, design students, and homeowners line up side by side, and conversations that usually happen at networking drinks spill out onto footpaths and front verandahs.

The 2025 program leans into Western Australia's layered architectural identity, mixing century-old restorations with bold new commercial fit-outs. From a sensitively updated bungalow in Subiaco to a Northbridge workspace that champions local timbers, the selection reflects a city willing to look back while it builds forward. Below is a curated pass through some of the residential and commercial stops that deserve a place on every itinerary.

Heritage Restorations That Honour the Original Fabric

Perth's residential architecture carries decades of stylistic change, and the 2025 program treats that history with care. One of the most talked-about inclusions is a federation-era home in Subiaco that has been returned to its early-twentieth-century elegance without sliding into pastiche. The owners worked with heritage consultants to navigate the Heritage Act of Western Australia, retaining original jarrah floors, decorative plasterwork, and the pressed-metal ceilings that often vanish under quick renovations. Visitors will see how sympathetic paint palettes, reinstated timber skirtings, and a reconfigured kitchen zone can coexist with strict conservation guidelines.

Nearby, a 1920s bungalow in Mount Lawley showcases a different kind of restraint. The home's restoration prioritises thermal performance — critical in a state where summer temperatures routinely climb above thirty-eight degrees — through discreet double glazing, ceiling insulation, and shaded awnings that match the original profile. Walking through these residences, attendees get a first-hand lesson in how heritage homes can meet contemporary comfort standards without erasing their character. The lessons translate directly to the broader WA housing stock, where thousands of pre-war timber homes still need thoughtful upgrades.

Coastal Residences That Respond to the Local Climate

Perth's relationship with the coast shapes a particular kind of residential architecture: breezy, shaded, and oriented to capture the afternoon sea breeze. Several homes in Cottesloe, City Beach, and Fremantle included in this year's program lean into that tradition with new interpretations. Cross-ventilation, deep eaves, and materials chosen for their performance in salty air — spotted gum decking, marine-grade stainless fittings, fibre-cement cladding — are the tools designers return to again and again. Some properties extend the indoor-outdoor connection with covered alfresco zones that work year-round, an Australian habit that has become a signature of the local market.

One standout is a contemporary home in Fremantle's heritage precinct that uses rammed earth walls sourced from a supplier just outside the city. The material choice responds to both embodied-carbon targets and the visual language of the surrounding limestone buildings. Visitors interested in how building codes under the National Construction Code Series intersect with passive-design strategies will find plenty to discuss with the architects on site. These houses are not beach boxes; they are carefully calibrated pieces of residential architecture tuned to a coastal capital's particular demands.

Apartment Living and the Rise of Compact Design

Perth's apartment market has grown steadily, driven by first-home buyers priced out of detached housing in suburbs like Mosman Park and Nedlands, and by downsizers looking to stay close to the river. The 2025 program features several inner-city apartments that rethink what compact Australian living can look like. Modular joinery, transformable rooms, and built-in storage systems are the hallmarks of this movement, and the designers behind them are some of the most talked-about names in the local industry.

Among them is a Perth furniture designer whose studio work has begun to appear in projects across the CBD and inner suburbs. Visitors touring his completed apartment fit-outs will see how a single dining table can fold down to bench seating, or how a bedroom can disappear behind a full-height joinery wall during the day. The pieces are made in small batches at workshops in Osborne Park and Malaga, supporting the local maker economy. For anyone designing a unit, a granny flat, or a secondary dwelling on an existing block, these solutions are a practical masterclass.

Commercial Interiors Worth the Queue

Open House Perth has always included commercial buildings, and 2025's program feels particularly attuned to how local businesses are shaping their workplaces. A restored warehouse in Northbridge now operates as a co-working hub for creative practitioners, with shared kitchens, meeting rooms, and a ground-floor café that opens onto the street. The fit-out celebrates the building's original brickwork and exposed trusses, layered with new joinery in sustainably certified Australian hardwoods. Visitors who work in similar spaces — or who are planning a fit-out of their own — can talk directly with the project's builders and designers.

Elsewhere, a boutique in Claremont demonstrates how retail design can reflect Western Australian materiality without leaning on imported trends. The owners commissioned a series of curved plywood display units fabricated in Welshpool, paired with lighting that has been tuned to the way West Australian light shifts through the afternoon. Hospitality venues are also on the list, including a small bar in Leederville where the owners navigated local liquor-licensing requirements while creating a venue that feels distinctly local. These projects show how commercial design in Perth is finding its own voice, separate from the Sydney and Melbourne references that once dominated.

Craft, Joinery, and the Return of the Trades

One of the quiet strengths of the 2025 program is its attention to trades and craft. Heritage restoration work depends on people who can replicate original details — cornice runs, ceiling roses, architraves — using both traditional methods and modern digital tooling. A highlight is a 1920s leadlight project where original windows were painstakingly removed, catalogued, and reinstalled by a specialist team. The work took months and required careful coordination with structural engineers to ensure the restored frames could handle modern wind-load requirements.

For students and emerging practitioners, these behind-the-scenes details are often the most valuable part of Open House. Architects and designers spend most weekends drafting on screens, and the chance to see hand-cut dovetails, rubbed-back limewash finishes, and forged ironmongery up close is a reminder of how much craft underpins the profession. Several studios involved in the weekend are also participating in Contemporary Wine In Design, the networking and showcase event that brings the local industry together over tastings and panel discussions. Together, the two events form a useful bookend: one for the built work, the other for the community behind it.

Beyond the Inner Suburbs: Fremantle, the Hills, and Regional WA

The full 2025 program extends well past the inner-city ring, and a few of the most rewarding stops require a short drive. Fremantle alone hosts a dozen properties, ranging from a converted customs house to a small art-deco apartment block that has been retrofitted with shared solar arrays. The Town of East Fremantle has been proactive about heritage listing, which means the area offers a dense concentration of well-preserved work. In the Perth Hills, a series of rammed-earth and straw-bale homes demonstrate how rural Western Australian plots can be developed with low-embodied-carbon materials and off-grid services.

Getting to some of these sites requires a car, a bike, or a willingness to use the Transperth network — a useful reminder that Perth's design story is not just a CBD story. Visitors planning a regional leg should check the Open House Perth website for shuttle options and timed-entry bookings, which are essential for the smaller residential properties.

The weekend remains the best moment of the year to walk through Perth's most considered interiors, meet the architects behind them, and see how the city's residential and commercial design is being shaped by local climate, local materials, and local ambition. Tickets for most properties are free, though several require advance registration. Readers who want to keep exploring the projects and people featured in the program can follow Contemporary's ongoing coverage, including detailed project write-ups and designer profiles published throughout the year. For those keen to extend the conversation beyond the weekend, Contemporary Wine In Design offers a relaxed setting to swap notes with the practitioners, suppliers, and students who make Western Australian design what it is.