Slim Aarons Energy: How The Seaview Hotel Styled Golden Hour Poolside
A waterfront hotel renovation, bespoke pool tiling, and the bold 1970s yellow that brought it all together.
The Renovation
When the team behind The Seaview set out to bring a waterfront hotel back to life, they didn’t start with a floor plan. They started with a photographer.
Slim Aarons — the man who spent decades capturing the leisure class at poolside, from Palm Beach to the French Riviera — became the mood board. That unhurried, sun-drenched, golden-age-of-resort-living energy was the brief for the entire renovation. Every material, every colour, every piece of furniture had to earn its place in that vision.
The Golden Hour umbrella didn’t just earn its place. In the team’s words, the Retro Umbrellas were “perfect additions” — the piece that anchored the warm, confident palette against the vibrant blues of the hotel’s bespoke pool tiling and locked the 1970s aesthetic into place.
Why Golden Hour Works in This Setting
Golden Hour is arguably the most Slim Aarons colour in the Retro Umbrella range. It’s a bold, saturated marigold yellow — not a muted tone, not a pastel, not a stripe. It’s the kind of unapologetic colour that defined poolside style in the 1970s: confident, warm, and impossible to ignore.
What makes The Seaview installation so striking is the contrast. That vibrant yellow against cool blue pool tiles creates a colour tension that feels like a deliberate design decision, not an accident. It’s the same principle interior designers use when they pair warm metallics with cool stone — opposites that elevate each other. The yellow reads as sunshine and energy; the blue reads as water and calm. Together, they create the exact mood Slim Aarons spent a career photographing.
Golden Hour is also the colour most frequently referenced alongside Slim Aarons by Retro Umbrella customers. It’s becoming a genuine brand association — the umbrella people reach for when they want their outdoor space to feel like a photograph from another era. And because it’s a solid colour rather than a pattern, it commands attention without competing with the surrounding design.
Get the Look
You don’t need a hotel renovation to capture The Seaview’s energy. Here’s how to translate the same palette into a residential poolside or patio:
The anchor contrast: Golden Hour demands something cool to play against. A blue pool, grey stone paving, white render, or even deep green foliage. A bold yellow this saturated pops when it has a counterpoint — without one, you lose the tension that makes the palette work.
Furniture: Teak or vintage-style aluminium sun lounges. White towels draped casually. White or natural cushions — not yellow. Let the umbrella own that colour. Think resort pool deck, not suburban patio furniture set.
Surface textures: Raw materials work best here — natural stone, exposed brick, worn timber. Anything that feels like it has a history, even if it’s brand new. The yellow is already the statement; the surfaces should ground it.
Keep it edited: The Slim Aarons look works because of restraint. A bold umbrella, a pair of lounges, a side table with a drink on it. That’s the photograph. Two or three pieces placed deliberately will always feel more curated than a space crammed with accessories.
Commercial-Grade, Residential Beautiful
The Seaview is a working hotel. Their umbrellas face daily use, coastal wind, intense UV, and guests who aren’t always gentle with the furniture. The fact that they chose Retro Umbrella tells you something about the build quality behind the retro aesthetic.
Every Retro Umbrella uses solution-dyed acrylic canvas — the same fade-resistant fabric used on commercial awnings and marine covers. This matters especially for a colour this bold. Cheaper fabrics in saturated yellows fade fast under Australian UV — within a season, that vibrant marigold would wash out to something tired. Solution-dyed acrylic holds because the colour is baked into the fibre during manufacturing, not applied afterward. The Golden Hour you see on day one is the Golden Hour you’ll see three summers from now.
The V3 frame is thicker aluminium with an upgraded aluminium runner, designed for the kind of repeated daily use commercial venues demand. The double-tiered canopy vents hot air upward, creating genuine airflow that a single-tier umbrella can’t match. It’s the reason the design works in hospitality — and the reason it feels noticeably different in your backyard.
Featured on The Block Season 21 in Britt & Taz’s winning backyard, the Retro Umbrella has proven itself in both residential showpiece settings and high-traffic commercial environments.
Free shipping Australia wide. Commercial-grade quality. As featured on The Block Season 21.
