What Are Design Guidelines and Why Are They Important?

If you’ve purchased land at Panorama Portarlington, there are some important guidelines, requirements and obligations you’ll need to understand before you commence the construction process, including our design guidelines.

What are design guidelines and why does Panorama Portarlington have them?  

If you have already, or are thinking about, purchasing at Panorama, you may have heard the term ‘design guidelines’. Design guidelines are a set of requirements and regulations that your home, landscaping and fencing must adhere to. Design guidelines aren’t intended to restrict design or development. Instead, they are there to benefit you by encouraging visually appealing streetscapes and providing confidence about the standard of housing design you can expect in your community. 

To ensure that Panorama looks beautiful and feels welcoming well into the future, there are some design guidelines to follow when designing your new home.  

These design guidelines have been produced to ensure that this tranquil environment is maintained and that the newly built homes will fit into the natural coastal surroundings.  

They will also help protect the integrity of your investment and provide you with the peace of mind that every house in your neighbourhood is built to the same high standards, while allowing everyone flexibility to express their individuality.

What design guidelines apply at Panorama?  

Generally, design guidelines set out the minimum requirement for house designs, landscaping, fencing and how the house should be positioned on the land. Some blocks will have special requirements additional to these, which you may have to take into consideration. 

You can read and download Panorama’s design guidelines here. Below, we’ve outlined some of the main building and landscaping points. 

Building design guidelines 

Character and style 

A contemporary coastal design theme has been selected as the underlying design essence for the housing at Panorama. This design theme consists of and reflects the design elements, materials and colour palettes of those homes that grace our Victorian coastline and extends to include Australian-inspired Hamptons beachside style.  

Building materials and colour palette

The building materials and colour palettes at Panorama must complement the contemporary coastal design theme. The following list of materials and colour palettes form the basis of the preferred mix you can choose from. There are a wide range of materials and colours available, and alternatives may be considered by the PPDP on merit of the design.

The preferred building materials to be considered include:

• Lightweight materials including, but not limited to:

  • timber cladding and weatherboards  

  • FC pre-finished cladding boards  

  • Ecoply cladding  

  • ColorbondTM cladding and other non-reflective painted and/or treated metal cladding.  

• Rendered finishes which enhance the overall theme of the house design.

• Face brick, natural and manufactured stone cladding and zinc cladding.

• Recycled material and/or timbers and unfinished timbers allowed to grey.

• Expressed steel work must be paint-finished and not a galvanised steel finish.

The preferred colour palette to be considered includes:

• Muted, natural colours in shades of greys, blues and neutrals reflecting their coastal surrounds.

• Tones from the natural environment that provide the least interruption to the landscape.

• Blackened charcoal and crisp white give a modern update to a traditional coastal home. However, the palette needs to avoid a stark black and white contrasting format.

• Vibrant colours are permitted but limited to small accent areas of the external façade (for example, front doors and small landscape features) and will be reviewed by the PPDP on merit. Fluorescent colours, unpainted or unfinished FC sheet is not permitted.

Landscaping guidelines  

Landscaping at Panorama must complement the local environment and pick up on the local species found on the Bellarine. Concept plans must take into consideration the location of services, view corridors, privacy, local climate, orientation and prevailing winds. Sustainable design, including material selection and source, must be considered as part of the landscape design: 

• No more than 40% of the front garden is to comprise hard paved surfaces.  

• 30% of the front garden area is to be soft planted garden beds.  

• Plant species are to be hardy, appropriate to the site and have reasonable drought tolerance. 

• The front garden should contain free draining surfaces such as:

  • Grass  

  • Mulched garden beds containing trees, shrubs, tufting plants and groundcovers - River pebbles, gravel toppings or similar  

  • All plants selected for landscaping must be selected from the Panorama Plant Species List.

Share the design guidelines with your builder 

It’s important to provide a copy of the design guidelines to your builder before signing a building contract to ensure your home design will comply with the guidelines. This will help you to avoid amending your design later in the process, which can delay construction and potentially cost you extra.  

Approval of your home design, fencing, landscaping and other structures must be obtained from the Panorama Portarlington Design Panel (PPDP) prior to commencing construction on any homesite. 

To learn more about the process of getting your home design approved at Panorama, read our blog.