New Rural: Where to Find It and How to Create It

How do you design your life? New Rural: Where to Find It and How to Create It is an interiors book for a new way of living that combines the space and freedom of rural existence with the connections and opportunities of the modern world.

This stunning photo-filled hardback is a guide for those dreaming of moving to the country; inspiration for anyone who craves touches of rural magic and cottagecore in their home – wherever that may be; and a window to the distinctive allure of Australia’s vibrant regional towns.

Authored and photographed by interior designer Ingrid Weir, this creative book is much more than a manual or a compilation of pretty interiors. New Rural profiles towns that embody the earthiness and romance of authentic and original rural living (the Hawkesbury Highlands, the Sapphire Coast, Coober Pedy, Kyneton and Satellite Island to name a few), offers guidance on how to find and create it yourself, and detours to subjects such as bringing the outside in, having friends to stay, mixing the old with the new, the importance of texture, and why food eaten outside tastes better.

This is a book about place and space, meaning and connection. It exists at a unique intersection, bringing together Ingrid’s expertise from film and television, interior design and her personal project renovating the old schoolmaster’s house in the gold-rush town of Hill End, New South Wales.

Get lost between these pages and wander through new ways of living.

Ingrid Weir has designed interiors in Mexico, Los Angeles and Sydney for clients including The Macquarie Group, The Sydney Opera House, National Parks and Wildlife, Charter Hall, The Film School and The National Art School.

Trained at Sydney University, she holds a Bachelors in Architecture. With a background in set and costume design, she has worked extensively in film, television and theatre in Australia. As the daughter of film director Peter Weir and production and costume designer Wendy Stites, she grew up in the industry.

Ingrid studied photography at CCAC in San Francisco and The Australian Centre for Photography. She photographed the 2015 Bringing Australians Home campaign for Qantas, which also involved flying around the country and holding photography workshops in capital cities on behalf of the airline.

For the past decade she has owned a country escape in the old gold-rush village/artists colony of Hill End in New South Wales' central west. She divides her time between there and Sydney.