It wasn’t necessarily the house that drew interior designer Kim Lapin to this Spanish-style home in the Los Angeles suburbs, but rather the storybook neighborhood. Before moving with her young family from the center of the city to Palos Verdes, where she’d grown up, she’d drive this particular street of the coastal Californian suburb simply to take in the area’s natural beauty — and marvel at the diverse styles of property through the car window. Craftsman, ranch, mid-century modern, contemporary: it’s a street that reads like an architecture textbook.
It’s not, however, an area so well-known for exceptional interior design. "While in this town there are beautiful homes, it’s not very common that they are well designed on the inside," Kim admits, "and I wanted to feel like my home was still an inspirational place, even in a suburb."
Creating the modern home she was looking for was a project that called for a gut renovation, and on some scale. With just her husband Chay and a one-year-old in tow at the time, Kim admits that the 3,000 square foot house was "big for them, but not too big" — somewhat fortunately, as the designer found out she was pregnant with twins just a month after moving in.
Still, even with her family growing, the home offered space enough — with a family room, which now opens up onto the kitchen for better flow between the two spaces, and a more formal living room for entertaining. "We call this the 'fancy room'," Kim says. "My kids love to be in there with me. We listen to music and have 'special drinks', which usually means sparkling water in fancy cups."
It’s one of the rooms that best shows Kim’s philosophy as a designer, even though her business was still in its early days during the renovation, having only just taken on her first clients. "This was my first home that I was getting to design from top to bottom," Kim explains. "The other homes we had lived in always had some renovation component, but I was never able to fully express myself to the degree that I was able to on this project."
Textural plaster walls and low, horizontal fireplace hearths wrapped in interesting marbles, used both in the ‘fancy room’ and primary bedroom, speak to the balancing act of luxurious and laidback, and the designer’s West Coast Cool meets European eclectic design aesthetic.
In the entryway, Kim’s take on a welcoming checkerboard floor feels softer, using more tonal natural stone than the classic black-and-white of elegant hotel lobbies. The lighting, while jewelry-like, is often specified in unlacquered brass, so that they "age over time, and don’t look too precious."
It’s a hard place to aim for, the cool factor, but for Kim, it’s more an incidental outcome than it is intentional. "What I’m aiming for is relaxing, yet delightful," the designer says. "This house is calm, but there is something interesting to see everywhere you look."
