Room of the Day: A Playful Palm Springs Style in L.A.
http://www.decor-ideas.org 10/22/2014 20:13 Decor Ideas
Even though Kelly Oxford chose to title her humorous New York Times bestselling book Everything Is Perfect When You’re a Liar, she wanted her midcentury Los Angeles home to be anything but fake. “I knew right away I wanted the house to be true to its design,” she says.
Except for “a crazy Gaggenau kitchen remodel” in the 1980s, Oxford says, the home was in its original 1960s condition. Even the lace floor-to-ceiling curtains were still hanging. To bring in the right furnishings and accessories to complement the design in the great room, she enlisted the help of designer Orlando Soria of Homepolish, and they worked on creating a Palm Springs vibe with sisal rugs, a monochromatic palette and saturated bursts of blue.
Photos by Tessa Neustadt and Sean Gin
The project focused on the long, narrow great room. The challenge was dividing up the space into logical areas that people would want to spend time in. Soria used three 10-foot by 14-foot sisal rugs to warm up the tile floor and create three areas: a formal sitting area in the center, a TV lounge (at left in this photo) and a dining area (at right).
This is the view when you walk through the front door. Soria chose to have the sofas in the formal sitting area face off to preserve the view to the garden and pool.
Rugs: Rugs USA
Oxford lives in the house with her husband, James Oxford, and their three kids: Sal (age 13), Henry (11) and Beatrix (6, seen here with Oxford). (You can see the TV lounge in the background.)
Oatmeal sofa: HD Buttercup; brass side table: vintage; coffee tables: Chromeo, Apt2B
For the TV lounge, Oxford wanted a sectional with plenty of space for the whole family. Soria found this vintage aqua sofa at Apt2B but Oxford was hesitant about having so much saturated color. “I’ve always been a boring, accent-with-color type,” she says. “Orlando assured me it would be great and left me to make the decision. I’m so happy I listened to him.”
They worked on adding subtle jabs of quirkiness, like with custom pillows depicting bananas. “We were looking for banana-leaf fabric and found this instead,” Soria says. “It has the playful movement of traditional banana leaf but more unexpected. There’s something kind of funny about it. It’s got the perfect amount of quirky and pretty and sophistication.”
The lace curtains are original to the home.
Coffee table: burled wood, AllModern
To get the 1970s tropical Palm Springs vibe, Soria commissioned his friend, Erika Lawrence Gragg, to make the three paintings over the fireplace.
For accessories Oxford and Soria strolled the Rose Bowl flea market and riffed off each other. “We just walked around, and he told me when I liked something that was ugly, basically,” Oxford says.
Soria then worked on creating a tablescape that looked good up close as well as from the entry of the home. He mixed heights and materials, like a ceramic grid sculpture, a metal tray, a wood tray and clothbound books to create a natural feel. “And not so covered in stuff that it looks jumbled,” he says.
Soria established the dining area to the right of the more formal sitting space. He started the layout with a 100-inch-long dining table surrounded by woven leather chairs.
The gallery wall brings in a bit of Oxford’s playfulness. She and Oxford bought several nude portraits at the flea market and painted bikinis on them. Oxford calls them “tasteful nudes.”
Table: West Elm; chairs; HD Buttercup
A built-in bar sits just off the dining room. Soria chose copper chairs for something to pop off the dark wood. “I thought it was refreshing to see metal,” he says. “And it looks like folded pieces of paper. There’s not much room to put something over there, so I thought it might as well be interesting.”
Chairs: Blu Dot
Soria also helped out with a section of the kitchen. He based the color scheme off a large poster advertising Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds in French that he and Oxford found at the flea market.
Table: Saarinen reproduction; chairs: Modernica; rug: Rugs USA; bench: custom
Oxford’s two Persian rescue cats, Gertie (left) and Gus, who’ve risen to their own level of celebrity status on Oxford’s Instagram account, are happy with the move, too. “They love the house, because they can run a really long, straight line,” Oxford says. Gertie races me all the time; it’s kind of insane.”
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