Clo 3d Designer In San Francisco

Karyn R. Millet

LISA CREGAN: So Proust had his madeleines, and this homeowner has little labeled bottles of sand?

JULIE KLEINER: Those bottles do trigger powerful memories. Our client is a businesswoman and an inveterate traveler — she has collected sand from beaches around the world. So when she's doing a chore in her home office, like her taxes, she can look over, see a bottle marked Abel Tasman, New Zealand, remember the golden beach, and get a little lift.

martha angus and katie mccaffrey bedroom desk

James Carrière

Is there anything as reinvigorating as sand and sea?

I think the ocean is the most beautiful thing on earth — in fact, the blushes and coppery tones in this living room and guest room are inspired by the sunset at my favorite beach in Maine. They're the colors in the broad expanse of sky at the end of the day. Or at least the way I remember them.

Karyn R. Millet

Do you think things can be even prettier in memory than in real life?

Sometimes it does unfold that way. At the start of this project, my client got a package from her sister filled with her old toys, Barbie dolls and the like. They're beautiful to her because they elicit happy thoughts, but by no means are they display material. Still, the idea of toys and childlike joy got embedded in my brain, and while perusing 1stdibs, I came across this peacock wall hanging made from strands of glass beads. I asked my business partner, Melissa Warner Rothblum, "Am I crazy? I think this is perfect for our client!" It reminds me of a Lite-Brite, which I had as a little girl, where you could make light-up pictures with colored pegs.

Karyn R. Millet

So where did that lead you?

To a youthful sense of fun for the whole house. My client always seems to be planning a party, and there's a constant flow of houseguests. To me, the polka-dot fabric on the gold bench in the living room feels like a candy wrapper, and there's something nostalgic about the stripe on the living room chairs. Stripes can be serious and traditional, but this one is wavy and naive — perfect for chairs we found at a Los Angeles thrift shop. To keep things from getting too sweet, we added the zigzag consoles. We tried lamps and plants, but that space still felt empty. The consoles have presence, like something out of a geometry textbook.

Karyn R. Millet

Given your high-spirited style, was it a letdown to work with heavy, Edwardian architecture?

Quite the opposite. I was excited when I saw the early-1900s facade, but the inside was definitely not right. The house was rehabbed in the '80s, and it looked it. They'd used Sheetrock to square the rooms and drop the ceilings, to cover the roof angles. We opened it all up. Once we'd raised the ceilings, we could incorporate a romantic master bedroom chandelier and these glass pendants over the dining table — they look like ice cubes melting against the beaches in the Massimo Vitali photographs.

Karyn R. Millet

Tell me about the sunny kitchen banquette.

Space was at a premium, so we nixed a formal dining room and used lounge seating in the kitchen instead. She has her coffee on the banquette, and it's where she relaxes with a glass of wine at the end of the day. But it also seats 16 for dinner; it's so comfortable, people have fallen asleep there late at night.

Karyn R. Millet

What else helped this house enter a new era?

The windows are a little short in the living room, even though they offer incredible San Francisco Bay views. We wanted to make them bigger during construction, but it became a zoning issue. So we added a five-inch-wide vertical strip of pattern on the edge of simple white curtains to lengthen the visual lines and give the windows a taller feel. In the master bath, we chose circular patterns for fabric and tile to soften the hard angles. And then, because the house can be a bit dark and my client is such a cheerful, outgoing person, I really wanted to give the place a little shimmer.

Karyn R. Millet

The rooms do seem to sparkle with something besides personality.

The kitchen backsplash is light blue and white honed granite with a slight shine, like sugar crystals. The office walls are covered in a metallic wallpaper with so much depth, you feel like you're diving into the room. And the vanity chair in the guest room is upholstered in a gleaming pattern, as if the person doing the silk-screening mixed silver into the gold ink. In the sunlight, it's magical.

Karyn R. Millet

What makes a space truly beautiful?

I think finishing touches make or break a look. If a bed is dressed properly, the rest of the room can be a shambles and it'll still feel pulled together. A matelassé coverlet with pretty pillows, such as the ones we used in the master bedroom — those small, subtle things are, oddly, the most essential.

See more photos of this lovely space here »

This story originally appeared in the November 2015 issue ofHouse Beautiful.

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