Find Authentic Danish Furniture Designs and Affordable Offbeat Gifts at Hay’s New Darlinghurst Store

“We needed more space.” That’s the simple answer Richard Munao gives when asked why Hay Shop has moved just a couple of hundred metres down the road to a new location on Crown Street in Surry Hills.

“The new space is 50 per cent larger and it’s also over a single level, whereas with the old location a lot of the furniture was upstairs, so you had people who’d come in and sometimes leave without even seeing it,” says Cult Design founder Munao, Hay Australia’s parent company.

In the new store, you’ll find its signature Danish furniture – which combines contemporary design with quality materials and a joyful aesthetic – alongside homewares, stationery, textiles and more. It’s housed in the heart of the Darlinghurst creative precinct, in a sprawling light-filled space beneath the new Oculus development by architects SJB.

In addition to the big-ticket furniture, such as the modular sofas and Copenhagen table range with coloured linoleum tops, there are fun and unusual homewares such as Wang & Soderstrom’s candleholders for $106, or geometrically shaped trays for $112. There are also gifts such as these mint-green Frotte slippers and a chic backgammon set, both under $100.

The sleek and striking building is an apt home for Hay, which was founded in Denmark in 2002 with the ambition of marrying good design ideas with innovative technologies to make daily living more agreeable and aesthetically pleasing. Since then, the brand has worked with some of the world’s most talented and courageous designers, including Sebastian Wrong, Scholten & Baijings and Stefan Diez, and opened its first Australian store in Sydney in 2015.

“The whole idea of opening a shop was really that Australia has unfortunately always suffered with replica furniture,” says Munao. “What I envisioned was that if people could see affordable and authentic beautiful designs, it would kill off a few issues that the industry was having with copies.

“You can obviously buy things a lot cheaper than what’s at Hay, but the idea was to show you that you don’t necessarily have to go to the very top end of town to find original quality design.”

Hay Shop Sydney
255 Crown Street, Darlinghurst
(02) 9538 0855

Hours:
Mon to Fri 10am–6pm
Sat to Sun 10am–5pm

hayshop.com.au