Most palettes that get called “coastal” are really a brochure: white walls, navy trim, a rope-and-brass kit that could belong to any holiday house between here and Byron. A Wide Bay Queenslander already has a quieter set of colours, if you let it speak first.
Look at the weatherboards in late afternoon, the green of the mango tree against the sky, the slightly dusty gold of the timber floors. Those are the starting points. A soft clay, a grey-green, a limewash that is not quite white. The room should still feel like Bundaberg when you close the door on a January afternoon.
We wrote this down after a week in Kepnock, where a house with good bones had been painted into a palette it did not ask for. Once the louder colours came off, the light did the rest. That is usually the work: less invention, more attention.