---
title: "Ep. 4: Buy Once, Buy Well w/ Renee Garnham"
description: Jardan creative director Renee Garnham joins Conversations Under Construction on creating space for yourself, sustainable furniture, and why buying to last beats buying cheap.
image: https://www.byra.co/hubfs/Podcast%20Images/Renee%20Garnam4.png
---
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# Ep. 4: Buy Once, Buy Well w/ Renee Garnham
[](https://www.byra.co/by-ra-blog/author/by-r-a)
by [By R.A](https://www.byra.co/by-ra-blog/author/by-r-a)
2 min read
Nov 6, 2026, 11:34:03 AM
From the outside, Renee Garnham looks like a woman with it all worked out. Creative director of one of Australia's most iconic furniture brands, a beautiful life on the coast, decades of success. And yet one of the first things she told me was how much she has to push through her own nerves, and how often she hands the microphone to her husband. This conversation was her quietly deciding to stand in her own right.
Renee's the creative director at Jardan, the furniture brand founded in 1987 and run by her husband Nick and his brother Michael. What began as a tiny team is now one of the country's most respected makers, fiercely committed to Australian manufacturing and sustainability. I've known Renee for years, and what I love is that she's the real thing, warm, creative, and refreshingly willing to talk about the messy bits.
Much of this episode is about something none of us do enough of. Stopping. Renee's leaned hard into her inner life this past year, meditation, breathwork, yoga, and a retreat in the desert with a group of women, no phones, lots of crying, completely outside her comfort zone. She's turned off the news and put down her phone, not to avoid the world but to cultivate her own awareness instead of buying into the fear. The payoff has been creativity. Strip away the noise, she says, and the ideas come flooding back. "The good stuff is in the mess."
Then there's the furniture, and a truth she and I keep coming back to. It's a myth that you save money buying cheap. She told a lovely story about a retired couple who brought in their thirty year old Jardan sofas to be recovered, so they could pass them to their daughter for her own kids. The upholstery was worn, but underneath the frames were immaculate. Meanwhile the imported replica chairs that used to cost a few hundred dollars are now covered in chemicals and destined for the bin. She's not precious about it though. Jardan works hard to keep pieces accessible, because the goal isn't luxury for its own sake, it's buying once and buying well.
The line that sat closest to how I work was this. Why is your sofa less important than your windows? Why is the heating and cooling the last thing we think about? The things you sit on and use every day are the point of a home, yet they're the first to be cut. Include your key pieces from the start. And if the budget runs out, which it does for almost everyone, bring your old furniture, live in the space first, and let the rest grow. The leather sofa I bought at auction for four hundred and fifty dollars twenty years ago is still immaculate, and it's just gone to my son's place.
There's so much more in the full episode, championing Australian makers, the honesty of working with your partner for seventeen years, and the trip to Peru she's just booked to work with Andean shamans.
## Listen to the full episode
Listen now on \[[Spotify](https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/1zaFIb3EP7b)\] and \[[YouTube](https://youtu.be/tApWCaLh5po?si=nz-ev0rQ4OunjSMY)\], or search Conversations Under Construction wherever you get your podcasts.
## Show notes and links
- Jardan: [jardan.com.au](https://www.jardan.com.au/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=18438705328&gbraid=0AAAAABmFC9lvrsRFWibI7nh2NP7Mrp3OZ&gclid=CjwKCAjwuuPRBhAnEiwA2Ji8ek6V_IQkpriT0Zv1jC-gtuzGXcjHzqXWv_Wt6s794BDvJvVXCivtVRoC1pgQAvD_BwE)
- Follow Jardan on Instagram: [@jardanfurniture](https://www.instagram.com/jardanfurniture/?hl=en)
---
*Conversations Under Construction is the podcast from By R.A., where we talk to the designers, makers and renovators shaping how we live. Subscribe to follow along.*
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