The Traitors' Claudia Bonifazio reveals the rental hack that landed her dream penthouse

Finding the right fit when it comes to Sydney rental apartments is no mean feat at the best of times.

So when Love Island alumni, couple Claudia Bonifazio and Austen Bugeja, stumbled across a spacious penthouse in Sydney’s inner west during their relentless search to find a suitable place to live, they were stoked.

“Finding an apartment in Sydney that wasn’t, like, disgusting was so hard,” Bonifazio says. “[It’s] honestly almost impossible to find something.”

After moving from Adelaide, Bonifazio, who’s a contestant on this season of The Traitors, spent four years bouncing around trendy inner-city suburbs like Surry Hills and Potts Point before she and Bugeja cast their net further out west.

Securing the lease for her current home – which the pair moved into a year ago – required a hack they learned from being knee-deep in the seemingly futile house-hunting trenches.

“The trick was to see them before they do the showing,” Bonifazio says. “We obviously became experts at that stage, after getting so many nos, that we had to.”

Bonifazio pinpoints two features in the penthouse that convinced her immediately that this was the home for her: the generous floor space and the main bedroom’s walk-in wardrobe.

“When I saw the wardrobe space, I could not say no,” she says. “I have that many clothes that this was a dream come true for me.

“I walked around the apartment, and I was like, OK, there are a few cracks on the tiles. The balconies are great, but they need a bit of redoing. And then I walked into the bedroom, I turned to my boyfriend and said, ‘OK, so we’re getting it.’”

Likewise, the spacious open living, dining and kitchen areas were all huge drawcards.

“Because we have such a big lounge room space, we have blow-up mattresses that we put out when my family visits,” Bonifazio says, adding that the couple regularly host up to 10 people who stay over. “Everyone has a slumber party in the lounge room. It’s just so cute and cosy.”

Bonifazio has designed her home to be welcoming, furnishing the lounge room with a “very comfortable” custom-made couch and leaning into a colour palette that exudes a calm and inviting vibe.

“I like to keep it looking a bit cottagecore in here,” she says. “I like the earthy tones with the greens. It’s very, very homey. I don’t want it to be, like, ‘You can’t touch anything.’ I just wanted everyone to feel warm, cosy, but also chic.”

The green and brown hues extend to the couple’s bedroom to help make the space feel “really comforting”.

For Bonifazio’s work as an influencer, the apartment’s balcony areas, which you can enter from almost every room in the home tick a major box when it comes to content creation.

“We have an almost 360-degree balcony, so the light you get is insane,” she says.

Bonifazio has turned one of the three bedrooms into her “content slash beauty room”.

Floor-to-ceiling mirrors create the illusion of more space, and added storage units hold Bonifazio’s beauty products and her collection of knick-knacks, including Disney and Pokemon collectibles.

These knick-knacks aren’t the only items Bonifazio collects – an estimated 200 mugs have pride of place in the kitchen.

“I have a mug shelf; I’m obsessed with mugs,” she says. “I think that’s the best part of this apartment, to be honest.”

As part of a cherished ritual, Bonifazio drinks out of a different mug each day, usually choosing a cup that ties in with the theme of what she’s up to.

“If I’m going to Japan, I’ll start using Japanese mugs,” she says. “If I’m going to a premiere, I always use a mug for that movie.”

Not to be outdone, Bugeja has his own version of a man cave that boasts a unique collection.

“One of the rooms is my boyfriend’s perfume room. I would call it a study, but there’s more perfume here than anything else,” Bonifazio says.

Although Bonifazio confesses she took a few months to adjust to being further out from the city, the couple have now well and truly settled in. And, as she jokes, it’s a far cry from her living arrangements in the Love Island villa or her stint in the Traitors mansion.

“The mansion was crazy scary and probably haunted, and the Love Island villa was open and exposed,” she laughs. “So this is a lot warmer, cosier, and there are no cameras!”