Classic, Timeless & All-American Design in Mark D. Sikes - Hollywood House Tour

Today on Homeworthy, we're bringing you to the Hollywood Hills where you'll meet Mark D. Sykes, an author and interior designer who is renowned for creating classic and traditional spaces that reflect his personal style. Timeless, spirited, and all-American. Mark's Regency and Mediterranean inspired home was built in the late 1920s. Inside, a theme of blue and white creates a harmonious thread throughout each space. He takes us to his gorgeous gardens where you'll see a stunning view of his ivy-clad home and the Los Angeles skyline. Throughout his career, Mark has worked on incredible projects across the United States and abroad, including the White House and Blair House, also known as the President's Guest House. He recently published Forever Beautiful, the third book in his beautiful trilogy, which celebrates a full year of beautiful interiors inspired by nature. So join us as Mark takes us on a tour of his stunning home. You won't want to miss this. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. Hello Homeworthy, I'm Mark D. Sykes. Welcome to my home in Los Angeles, California. Come on in. Hi, I'm Mark D. Sykes. I'm an interior designer, and today we're sitting in my home in the Hollywood Hills in California. I was born in Texas and lived there for six months. Then my family and my parents moved to a small town in Illinois called Decatur, Illinois, and my father was a preacher, and I lived there until I was 15. My grandparents were close, my aunts were close, and spending that time in the Midwest was really wonderful because you really got this understanding of what a home felt like. Right after that, we moved to Nashville, Tennessee in the South, spent many years there, and that's really where I learned a lot about gardening and entertaining and more about design and more about aesthetics. I went to college, first thought I wanted to be a dentist, went to Baylor, did not work out, ended up doing, getting a financial slash economics degree in the University of Illinois. I moved back to Nashville, Tennessee after college, quickly realized I probably wasn't cut out for the financial industry and started working at Banana Republic, which is an amazing all-American retailer. I was there during the heyday when it was growing rapidly between the 90s and the 2000s. They were owned by The Gap. I started in stores and then I made my way to California, to San Francisco, to the corporate offices. I think at the corporate offices over the last 15 years that I was there, it was such an informative and amazing time for me because The Gap really invested in their people, really trained creative people how to execute creativity, learned a lot about marketing, learned a lot about storytelling, learned a lot about strategy, and I really think that time really shaped my thoughts and my processes and my systems around how to be creative and how to design. So we, when we moved to Los Angeles, we looked at real estate for quite an extended period of time. Saw all different types of houses. We really had a specific area that we wanted to be in, which was West Hollywood, the Hollywood Hills, the Beverly Hills area. But also being a classicist and a traditionalist, I wanted a classical traditional home, which is hard to find in the hills because most of the time things are bi-level or like kind of rambling and spread out. But we discovered this wonderful home in the Hollywood Hills that was built in the late 1920s. It's got Regency slash Mediterranean details and what I was so drawn to initially about the house was that it has a really traditional floor plan where you walk in and entryway. You have a living room on the left and a dining room on the right. The kitchen's behind you and you have an upstairs that is in the same format. So it was a little bit more of a Georgian style architecture of the house, which was very rare and it was also in the Hollywood Hills. So we were taken with it and immediately and saw the potential in it and that's how all this came about. Welcome to our home here in the Hollywood Hills and this is our entrance slash foyer and it's kind of the center of the first floor. The living room's on the left and the dining room's on the right and we wanted it to feel light and airy because it is kind of an open space. So the floors are all whitewashed, the walls are in a beautiful off-white. This amazing table from David, I attest, is also in a really beautiful ivory finish and you'll notice throughout this space things that we love, blue and white, baskets, are all integrated. Also what's kind of fun in the entryway is all the art on the walls are wonderful pieces of art that I've collected over the years. Some from the Paris flea market, others just from artist friends and they're all kind of framed in very tonal clean frames. Well the entry table is very simple. It's just, you know, we always have a beautiful plant, a few blue and white plates that are always on the table either for keys or for mail but this is kind of how it always is and, you know, we're known for blue and white. We love blue and white. The lighting fixture is from Vaughn Lighting and it's an alabaster pendant. I love the greek key that's around it. I was drawn to this particular light because of the shape and I didn't want it to distract from the entryway of the living and the dining room and I love the light alabaster finish because it really is a beautiful finish with all the tonal neutrals and creams in the house and then the bronze chain is also a wonderful accent much like the wrought iron railing going up the stairs and the black doors. I just love kind of the finishes and the different colorations of the particular light. These columns are original to the house and when we first bought the house they were painted solid and I struggled a little bit with what to do on them and we had a person that was helping us do some of the construction work and painting and I asked them to strip the columns first and as they got further in the process I was like, oh that looks really wonderful, you know, the weathered technique so we kind of kept that and then we did a decorative painting here on the pediments but this was a little bit of an organic process of how they ended up but they are original to the house. They create some architecture and some lovely symmetry. As a very young child I always was drawn to beauty, all types of beauty, you know, beautiful homes, beautiful gardens, beautiful people. I was mesmerized by my mother's magazines at the time she would get, you know, the Vogues and the Hartford Bazaar and the Town and Countries and the W magazines. I specifically remember all the old Estee Lauder campaigns back in the day where there'd be this beautiful model sitting in a beautiful setting wearing a beautiful garment and she would be selling a perfume or something but it really told a whole complete picture of that person and around beauty so I was always mesmerized by those things. I always noticed what people wore, how they entered rooms, how they smelt. There was a distinct difference to me than a woman who was physically beautiful but a woman who had a lot of style so these were always things I was really drawn to and loved so it was not a surprise that later in my life I, you know, found a place for myself in the retail world and I loved it and it's not a surprise that, you know, that turned into an interior design career. Okay, we're going to take a couple steps down to our living room which was right off of the entryway and this room is fabulous mostly because the heights of the ceiling and because of the arched the ceiling. The front windows open up to the front gardens at the front of the house and then these back windows slash doors open up to the garden. We often have the windows open which really creates this wonderful indoor-outdoor experience and like the entryway we wanted everything to feel kind of like light and airy so you'll notice the color palette is mostly creams and off-whites with little touches of blue. Lots of beautiful textures in the mix here. The wicker, the bone inlay, the antique gilt console, the lacquer Parsons table. Just kind of a really, I think, wonderful mix of things and a wonderful mix of finishes. This seating plan is interesting when we are entertaining we want to have little places that people can have conversations, you know, whether people are on this side of the room or on this side of the room so it's kind of a fun eclectic seating plan. We have wickers throughout the house but in this room we have a couple pieces of a Bonaccino wicker which kind of sit adjacent to one another. We have these wonderful Chippendale chairs from Jonathan Burden that are one of my favorite things I've had for years. One on either side of the room. Also love the trees in the room, you know, the whole idea about the indoor-outdoor experience and making you feel that this living is connected to the outside. I think the trees play a great role in that. Over the years, the rooms evolve, homes evolve, but we've collected many, many books. So just recently, four or five years ago, I had these bookcases made for this particular space to start housing more of our library. So not only are they functional but they're also beautiful and I think they add an architectural element to the room that's really wonderful and great. Sometimes there's plants in them but our house is constantly rotating and I think that, you know, when you come back and visit next time, you'll probably notice that we move things around. So sometimes these vessels are on the ground with plants in them. Sometimes I put baskets on top of the bookcases but as for now, some of our blue and white is showcased up there at the top and some of the plates that you saw on the entryway on the entrance table, the additions to those plate collections are here in the bookcases on plate stands. So there's little little things sprinkled around but there's common threads that, you know, of those things that tell the story of the house. This room is also filled with many collections. Besides the books, you'll notice I have a lot of wonderful little ivory inlaid rattan boxes that are somewhere here on mantle. Some are also sprinkled around on the side tables. I always find that, you know, when I'm traveling, I'm always like finding something new that I want to add to the collection and I always want to showcase them in the house in some way so I get to enjoy them. But I always find, whether it's my house or anyone's house, is that the best way to showcase collections is to bring them all together in one location and really make a statement with them. I think it's a little bit more powerful and a little bit more clean than having things sprinkled all around. So here on the coffee table is our lapis blue stone collection of boxes and little bowls and little vases. And that's my little trick or my personal trick to how I would like to showcase collections. Yeah, the mantle was original to the house. We had a decorative painter come in and decorate it, paint it, so it felt like a little bit weathered and distressed. It almost feels like plaster, which was the intention. But yes, this is original to us having the house. When I first moved in the house, the fireplace we filled with coral and just recently we changed it to birch logs. Yeah, but this is original and the same decorative painting that's on the fireplace is also on the columns and the entryway. So over the years, we've curated and collected lots of wonderful pieces of art. Around the room, there's a few small pieces that are basically neutral drawings, but this is more of a statement piece. This is this wonderful abstract piece of art from our friend Catherine, who is from Alabama and I think now lives in Georgia. Catherine Jones. Just love the colors, love the textures, love the graphic. I'm a huge fan of contemporary abstract modern art mixed in traditional interiors. I think that's a way to make traditional rooms and classic architecture feel fresh and more modern, but I love this piece of art. And in every room of the house, we always have lots of candles. This particular room has a couple candlesticks on the mantel, a couple hurricanes on the coffee table, little candles sprinkled around on the tables, and we always light those in the evening, which are really beautiful. We have our bar set up. Many of the things on the bar are things I've had for years. I mean, these little eggs I've had for 25 years. This piece of coral I had in my first apartment. So these are just kind of things that I love and are sentimental. I love all the textures and all of the colors. This wonderful match strike that was given to me by a dear friend is very special. There's a lot of little things that I've had for a long time that are important that I think look lovely in the space. Besides the trees, there's always lots of plants in the house. Michael, my partner, has a wonderful green thumb. And there's also baskets all around the house. So underneath this console here, we have this basket full of all my hats. So we're always going in and out of the house, and I always want to grab a sun hat. So this is a wonderful place for them. Well, I think the best compliment anyone can give you about your home, of course, we all want to be told our home is beautiful, but I love it when people say, oh, your home is so inviting. It's so comfortable. It's so relaxed. It's so easy. I also think being a decorator, it's wonderful when a home feels eclectic and curated and not necessarily so decorated. But most importantly, we want people to feel comfortable in our home, and I think that's the best compliment. Well, I mean, I think with any type of house you decorate, mine included, and the projects we've worked on, you instinctively kind of when you walk in, you know what you want to do, and it just kind of tells you what to do. I think the first thing that we did here was we wanted to lighten everything up. So the floors were like a really dark gray color. We bleached them, whitewashed them, lightened them up, painted pretty much the whole main level on the floor, like holistically, a really pretty off-white. It was very simple. And over the years, rooms have evolved, rooms have changed, and we've added layers. But initially, it was really just kind of, you know, kind of coming up with like a tonal, very clean, very light palette and using black as an accent. I've always been drawn to classical design, an all-American aesthetic. And when we found this house, of course, those influences played a big role in the house. The house is light, it's airy, it's filled with comfortable silhouettes of furniture, it's filled with wicker, it's filled with objects and collections that we collect and that we love. And it has a very indoor-outdoor feeling, which is also a hallmark of the things I love, but also our work. You really feel like you're connected, the interior spaces are connected to the outdoor spaces and vice versa. And we spent a lot of time transforming the gardens. We're in the hills, so the whole backyard had to be excavated and landscaped and terraced. But that part of the house, the gardens themselves have become such an important, intricate part of the house. And it really creates this like environment where you're this complete indoor-outdoor experience. So welcome to our dining room, a room that is formerly for dining, but it's not often used for dining. We really wanted this space to feel like another space that people could hang out and just enjoy. I think what's unusual about the space is these wonderful banquettes that we added to the sides and to the little niche. So it is a great place when you're taking a phone call or if you have company and you're having cocktails. The room is covered in fabric, this wonderful Brunswick & Fitcheck. We put on the walls, we also put on the ceiling. You can tell the ceiling's biased, kind of creates this tinted effect. It's also the same fabric that's on the drapery, but we did a little bit of having fun with the applications of again turning the check onto a bias on the leading edge and around the bottom. There's so many beautiful trims and so many beautiful layers to all the pieces. There's this wonderful batik blue and white that's on the back of the drapery. And we have this sheer here. This room gets direct sunlight at different times of the day, so the sheer is wonderful. This is from Perry Fray and it's just a wonderful, also like a large windowpane linen sheer. Our banquettes also are kind of a mix of fabrics, a mix of trim. So we have this wonderful like little ticking stripe. We have the same blue and white that's on the walls on pillows. Again, some of these wonderful batiks that are like on the back and the front of the pillows. And beautiful trims, bullions, cords. These particular, this is a really fun story about these Gracie panels. So we had these Gracie panels made for the living room several years ago and they have since moved to the dining room. The pattern, I was really drawn, I was reading an about Dita Blair. So Dita Blair had these beautiful panels that were made by Gracie years ago when she was in D.C. with designer Billy Baldwin. And those panels went from her D.C. house to her New York house. And her New York house was I think eight years ago featured in Wall Street Journal. I just loved them. I loved the pattern. And I found out with Gracie, who we work with a lot, that those had been a part of their pattern or archive. So they worked with me on recreating them. I kind of created my own palette and framed them. These are, I guess, you know, were original and we brought them back and had them colored for the room. And I just think they're wonderful. They really kind of tell the whole palette of the house. And again, we're always trying to incorporate the indoors with the outdoors. And I love the scene with all the green trees and all the people and all the little blue and white. But these are wonderful framed chinoiserie panels that are on this wall and then also on the other wall over the banquette. The same style of light that you saw in the living room, the gallery de lamp lights that have the little frames are also in this room as little wall lights. Again, I love lamps, floor lights, and wall lights. They're really great for intimate lighting and for functional lighting. We have them on all four walls. And then to create some type of structure and some type of balance of symmetry, we have wonderful pedestals that are in the window with some blue and white urns. Throughout the house, you'll see and you have already seen wicker sprinkled throughout the house. I love wicker and I love the texture of it and what it does to a room. It instantly makes the room feel inviting and casual and comfortable. These are bonnet china with these wonderful chairs that we have. And they don't necessarily match the table, but I love the texture. Really fabulous seat cushions that are made in this wonderfully joffa fabric by Carolina Irving. We, you know, that kind of fit into the blue and white theme into the boutique theme. Sometimes this table is skirted. We recently took the skirt off just to kind of have the room feel a little bit different, but sometimes it's skirted and it's skirted in the same chuck that's on the walls. Like everyone, I go out shopping and I find things that I love and I just buy them and I have no idea where they're gonna end up. So I found this wonderful camel at John Roselli many, many years ago and it's a little camel table and I just fell in love with it and had no idea where we were gonna put it, but it's found a home here in the dining room and it's always got a wonderful plant on it. If we have wild crazy parties, sometimes it has like an ashtray or a couple cocktails on it, but this little guy is our friend and our dog Poppy loves it. He barks at it every morning. The chandeliers from David Aetesta. This wonderful chandelier, love the gilt, love the verdigris painted green. You know, it's always tough to find like a light for a dining room that doesn't feel too fussy, but does make a statement and I think that this chandelier makes a statement, but there's something simple about it which we love and I love how it plays with the color palette of the really creates this kind of relationship to them. It doesn't overpower the room as well. I've often asked the question about who I would invite for dinner if I could invite anybody and it is a very, very long list, but if I had to pick two, I always say I would love to invite Jackie Kennedy because she's an eternal icon to me personally and someone that I just love. I'm kind of semi-obsessed with and then I would invite Oprah Winfrey because I'm also obsessed with her and I would love them being my dinner guests because I know Oprah would ask all the right questions and we would get to hear all the wonderful stories from Jackie and I think that would be just the wonderful wish dinner guests that I could have and also having someone's living today and someone that's not here. I think it would be really fun. Well, we entertain two ways. Sometimes we'll entertain where, you know, the doors are open and we put all the food buffet style on the kitchen island and people can either go out sit in the garden or they can come sit in the dining room or they can sit in the living room, just like a very casual. This particular table has several leaves so this table can be opened up and we can add four to six more seats to it. These banquets also come in handy because the table can open up and people can sit at the end of the banquet also at the table, but yes, we, you know, we use the dining room in multiple ways. Less formally, most of the time casually for eating, but also just for, you know, hanging out and spending time just because of the banquets and the wonderful swing arm lights. Eight years ago we published our first book which was called Beautiful and it was mostly made up of projects from our earlier work and that particular book was the chapters were format around mood boards, basically color stories. So we took our work and we created chapters that were distinctive to the color stories that were drawn to and were distinctive to stories that I talked about my blog and that I talked about on social media. With the success of Beautiful, the first book, we, you know, published a new book and we called it More Beautiful and we wanted to continue the story of beauty because it had been so successful and we felt like we had more to say, we had more to show. So that particular book was broken up in chapters around styles of homes because at that point I really wanted to show a range of work and, you know, of like different styles and different types of homes that we could do, but there was this common thread of like our signatures that were woven through. So when you looked at one of these rooms or one of these chapters you would know that was Marquis Sykes interiors. And then just recently, as of a couple weeks ago, we published our third book eight years later from our first and it's called Forever Beautiful and it is going to round out the Beautiful trilogy and continue the story of beauty. And this book we're so proud of because it has 12 chapters, it has 12 projects, the projects are all over the country from East Hampton to Palm Beach to Bermuda, Kansas City, Chicago, Beverly Hills, Montecito, Vail, all over the country showing all different styles of houses. But each of these chapters are reflective of a month of the year and the whole story of Forever Beautiful is really getting deeper into beauty and what beauty is and really talking a lot about how nature and how the environment and how what's right outside your door can inspire the color palette, the textures, and the sensibilities of your home. So it's really a love letter to nature and I think it's such a wonderful way to kind of round out the Beautiful trilogy and end the story on Beautiful. And now we will probably move on to something else in a new way but we're very excited about it and really proud of the work and the same team that worked on the first book and the second book worked on this book so it's a joy to see how everything evolved and has grown and I celebrate all of them. So now we're in the kitchen slash family room which in every home is the heart of the house and this is probably where we spend most of our time. The room when we first bought the house this was three separate spaces there was more of a galley kitchen and this back little area was a separate bedroom but we kind of opened it all up to make one large space and the room is anchored with the wonderful island and then this niche here is kind of where we watch tv we read where our dog poppy spends a lot of her time but this area is kind of where we spend most of our time and again like the other spaces in the house you'll notice there's wicker in this room it's be like your brother wicker but in a little bit of a darker finish more boxes this is kind of where all the blue and all the white all of our white collections are of pitchers and platters and different things book overflow most of the books now are in the living room but this is also a place where books tend to migrate into the cabinets like other places in the house too you know there are collections of blue and white you'll notice the plates some plates that we have in the entryway in the living room there's more here in the kitchen slash family room and in here we decided to hang them all on the walls which i think are really kind of a fun way to display a collection we have little clover shapes on the door over the doors a long linear collection going over the french doors uh out to the garden room and there are also some more on the side of uh the kitchen as well i always like in a kitchen for there to be a balance of closed cabinetry open cabinetry and glass doors so we have all we have um closed cabinets over here is where we obviously have more of our dry goods and our spices and some dishes and then glass cabinets here on either side of the sink where we have our glasses and our everyday dishes and then open shelving for books platters and pictures in the family room so here's a little bit of our everyday china of course like most households we just have solid white we also have a collection of uh antique willow ware which is uh blue and white we also have a collection and multiple pieces of spode ware and all of these can obviously be used individually or all mixed together these are just little little bowls and dishes that we use for multiple things when we're entertaining for nuts or for little like salads and these are just like from the antique market which is really fun and then these are just these wonderful dishes actually these are from bunny williams did years ago with ballad which we just love them um and this is our kind of everyday china and if i ever find new pieces of china that i love we always like add it but most of the things that we have we like to mix them um you know and layer them together this is a little fun um thing that we always have it's a little catch-all we have a little basket for our keys this little basket which is actually bunny medley melons basket that was given to me as a gift many many years ago that i keep here and has my stationery and has any invitations or note cards i love fireballs and we love mints for company and those are also always out here and um phone chargers of course right here but this is like a little like for us a little catch-all of everything our fridge always looks pretty much like this the first level is always a mix of drinks water tea um sparkling waters the second shelf always has bowls of fruit um boiled eggs just you know everyday things that we're always grabbing poppy our dog's food here dinner uh items more vegetables and things are always kind of on the second level we have bread and cheeses um more drinks lots of milk uh but the refrigerator is um pretty much always like this with always the same things in them this is our little breakfast table a saranin table that i literally have had for 25 years i think i had this in one of my first apartments and some billicky um little dining chairs that are i love these chairs because they're not only functional chairs for the table but it's also super comfortable whenever we have our nieces or family here we always sit here and play games so it's a really comfortable place to not only eat but also to play games and it just sits right off the garden and um i think this this room and the living room you really have this indoor outdoor experience uh that we love these doors are usually always open and everything's kind of feels connected together so tucked on either side of the kitchen one side has a small laundry room this side has the powder room and this is the more formal powder room that is used for guests even though it's in the kitchen family room and um this room it feels like a little jewel box a little blue and white jewel box there's a hand-painted portuguese blue and white tile on the lower part and then this wonderful adelphi wallpaper that also feels like a tile pattern above the uh wainscott again those same style of lights that we love the color de lump lights with really cute little shades and um you know all the things a little powder room has we have a basket we have candles and uh there's always fresh flowers but this is our our powder room well we are working on um so many exciting projects uh projects all over the country um some current projects that we're working on are in kiowa island and a beautiful project in baltimore which is a john russell pope house uh working on a project in the hamptons um dallas fort worth texas um an incredible project here in los angeles called falcon lyre which used to be rudolph valentino's house that we're resurrecting so many many wonderful projects uh we also just finished probably the most special project that i've ever worked on it's called is blair house which is in washington dc which is the guest house of america and uh it's a project that we've been working on for a year and a half to two years and um what's so great about this project is that um first of all blair house this year is celebrating its 200th anniversary of being the guest house of america where all the foreign dignitaries stay when they visit the white house or visit visit washington dc um but 40 years ago was the first time that the house had really been touched from a design perspective and at that time period mark hampton and mario blotta who are both complete um iconic idols of mine in the design world had done it and nothing has really changed since then so it was such an honor and a joy not to only work on blair house for our country but to also follow in the footsteps of mark and mario and like continue that story so our job we felt like was just to continue the story of beauty and continue the story of what they had started but again you know make the house feel more inviting more comfortable knowing that there's so many people that are visiting there we wanted to really think about what their experience would be like not only do we want them to feel like they're in the most beautiful guest house in america as it should be but that is also it was also inviting um and they felt at home um and it was a big task so we just installed that a couple weeks ago it's um incredible you know from a design perspective everything in the house is american everything house is custom we worked with some amazing collaborators schumacher samuel and sons christopher spitzen miller patterson flynn martin uh frederick victoria on everything being custom in the house and completely designed for the house we worked with our some decorative painters uh to do custom decorative painting and villadere to do beautiful gilding so we're very proud to say that everything in the house is american and we're really proud to say that we think it is the most beautiful guest house in america and hopefully the most inviting as well another really special project that we had the honor of working on was with dr biden on her east wing offices we were approached several years ago and worked with her and her team on creating these beautiful design schemes that were reflective of her and how she wanted to host people in her office and her area the east wing had never really been touched from a design perspective so it was a joy and an honor to work with her she's so lovely and so appreciative but also just be a part of american history well welcome to our garden i have to say this is probably my favorite space in the entire house we spend tons of time out here this is kind of our sanctuary even though we're in the hollywood hills when you're out here you really feel like you're tucked away somewhere really far off and removed and it's a very simple you know this looks like there's lots of layers but it's very simple it just has brick brick patio floors brick steps lots of potted boxwoods big ficus trees that kind of you know surround uh the gardens and crate walls big ivy growing all over the house and all over the gardens and that's basically the mix of plants uh all of these potted terracotta pots are always filled with annuals or perennials so right now we have really beautiful geraniums but different types of times of the year there's different things that are potted in all the pots this is our fountain i uh i always recommend to everyone that everyone should have a fountain in their house and whenever you position the fountain you want to have in a place that you can really hear it in multiple locations and our fountain our house isn't really large but the fountain you can hear in the living room you can hear in the kitchen you can definitely hear in the bedrooms upstairs and it's such a wonderful sound of serenity uh it's so peaceful so this part of the house was probably beyond the renovation that we did inside this was probably where there was the most work done when we first moved into the house we back up we're in between two streets there's a street behind us so there's a street in front and um all of this was all filled in was just like a hill of uh wild palm trees and wild plants and you really had to almost like you know fight your way through to get from the front to the back and initially i immediately thought oh my goodness we need to terrace this and clean it up and create more structure and so this um this area we spent the most time on i think they said there was like 13 semi trucks of dirt that were removed to create these terrace uh areas but it's again very simple it's just brick walls as we got up to each layer you know the first layer is just a grassy knoll we get up to the third layer and there's some more like partier garden ask another fountain so this is the the first terrace and um it's just very simple there's benches on either side and this is where our dog poppy plays and this is like her little area and um a beautiful view of the garden itself of the terrace and the house so this is the upper the second terrace and then we'll go up here to the upper level and on this side we have a really pretty um structured part here with a little fountain back here which is lovely and a bench a viewing bench and up here you really have wonderful views of the city so this is probably the best place where you can see los angeles uh this view and view from the guest bedroom is our what i would say are it's really wonderful at night where you can really see la we're standing up here not only do the view of los angeles but you have we have all these little you know we have boxes for potted flowers and these flowers and the boxes under the windows also change with all the annuals um we have striped awnings on the master the primary master um juliet balcony and then on the guest uh balcony so i think that added a lot of like add a little bit of pattern a little bit of texture and then like i said earlier the fig ivy we planted this fig ivy 12 years ago and there was nothing and now the house is completely pretty much covered with uh fig ivy which i think feels really romantic and really cozy and you know just makes the house feel like really old i love it so first off we have a little small guest room that also is a library and it's also my dressing room and i think what's so charming about this particular room is you know i love stripes i love blue and white and we took one single stripe it's actually a design of mine with schumacher we just put it on everything the walls the ceiling and on the daybed the romans are very simple they're just ivory linen with some blue inset tape and in this particular room we built these these bookcases when we first moved in and they housed my magazine collection so i had basically i'm going to age myself here but probably 25 years of magazines that ranged from fashion to shelter um all the way back to you know these particular magazines went from me from apartment to apartment from house to house and they're still here and we keep adding to them so that's the room is basically made up of that collection um wonderful little guest room that's one of my closets where i you know have all my suits so it kind of also serves as a dressing room as well over the covid time period i did spend a lot of time in this room going back to old magazines and um you know finding inspiration and putting lots of post-it marks on them and um this is an area where i come to over and over again and um you know i just love i think there's nothing like paper and touching it and feeling it i know the world is becoming much more digitalized but it is wonderful to kind of have all these um magazines as you know a source of inspiration and something to collect and they have a story they just have been through been with me for many many years and in many different parts of my life and um i just love them all i often think about this i often think myself i question like will i ever not feel inspired i will never feel like you know there's nothing that's like um uh that i see that's creative and i it's never happened and i think that if you keep your eyes open um if you get out and about if you um are truly engaged in seeing the world there's beauty everywhere and i think that beauty is inspiring and as i become more creative and i find greater sources of inspiration i realize it could be in a piece of art it could be in a old tapestry it could be in a visit to a museum um it could be going to the library and just looking through old books i mean it can come from a million things but i think if you if your head is up and your eyes are open and in many ways your heart being open i think you can find creativity and inspiration every day and all the time and i feel like you know it's interesting too it's like i always find i'm most inspired on sundays or i for some reason that's my personal day where i can actually look at books and look at magazines and take walks and i think if you're rested as well if you're rested and you're relaxed your mind is so much more open to creativity and to creative thoughts i always come in on mondays with all these ideas because i've had time to it's not conscious either it just happens naturally i think there's something to to that so here we are in the primary bedroom and the bedroom sits on the second floor and overlooks the gardens so when we were outside earlier you all saw the juliet balcony and the juliet balcony is off the primary bedroom and this room has this wonderful custom gracy wallpaper very subtle blues and creams and naturals and we customized we added like little blue and white pots to the seam at the lower part and you know the room is very simple it's kind of all about one fabric this wonderful brunswick fabric that we love there's a couple slipper chairs again there are wall lights for reading and lamp lights for reading and table lamps but if we're not in the kitchen or we're not in the garden this is where we obviously spend the big majority of our time and we have these two wonderful chairs here that are that i use to do work sometimes and read but also to watch tv this particular part of the bedroom because it's an older house and because it's not too large we had to make it as much capacity as possible so we added all these wonderful built-in cabinets to the wall that are where clothes are or different things but they're mirrored which makes the space feel larger and more open so you kind of don't even realize that they have these cabinets here but they are and more books of course these big wonderful bone inlaid boxes that have accessories and cufflinks and pocket squares and all those small things michael has one and i also have one here's one of my little hidden closets and i'm as you could tell i love navy blue and i love white and that's pretty much what the entire closet is but this is where all my sweaters are my pants and my casual shirts and a couple pairs of tennis shoes this is an antique screen i've had for years and it's been in several homes and in multiple locations in this home and added it to this room to kind of like separate my closet from the larger room of itself a bit it also balances out the chinoiserie chest on the opposite side of the bedroom love what the the dark lacquered and the chinoiserie adds a little drama to the room so it's not all like pale blue and ivory but this is a wonderful chest from john roselli that i've had for years again another little collection of another little ivory boxes wedgewood my uncle and aunt collect wedgewood so they always give me little pieces of wedgewood so this is super special to me every little surface and every little corner has a something that's a little sentimental well the word home means lots of things to me i think i touched on it earlier but growing up in the midwest and being near my grandparents and being in my aunt's homes in my home i really understood and had a great sense of what a home felt like and when when i think about a home i feel like it's someplace that's inviting someplace that's comfortable a place that's easy that doesn't feel precious i think it's a place also that's full of traditions whether the traditions are around the times of year but that is what i think of when i think of what a home feels like i think in the south my years in the south that experience i really learned a lot about more entertaining and more about design and architecture gardening i think there was a just a sense of traditional formality in the south that you really learn a lot from from a design perspective and then these years of living on the west coast i think the west coast is a wonderful combination of both the midwest and the south because you have you know this wonderful weather and you have this wonderful kind of a little bit more of the ease and there's a little bit of a bohemian nature the combination of all that combined with those wonderful feelings of the home in the midwest and those really wonderful traditions of the south kind of have come all together and all three of those experiences have really shaped and informed our design work and who we are and each project and each book i think you can really feel that sense of that sense of inviting comfortable environment that sense of a traditional classic elegant design and the ease and the casualness and the spirit of california