- Welcome back to Houzz TV Live.
I'm Rick Spence, and with me today is Laura Elliot
with Refined Interiors out of beautiful San Francisco.
And today, you've got a really beautiful, whimsical home,
just fun and happy, and it just puts me in a good mood.
- [Laura] Thanks, Rick.
Yes. This was such a fun project to work on.
These clients were so much creativity, so much energy,
and I wanted to bring that into the space.
- [Rick] When you first walk in,
you're greeted with these nice colors,
beautiful rugs, and light.
Let's start with the entry.
- So this is an older home.
It was built to 1917, so it has a lot of character,
and it has some old world charm.
The house just had of all these different shades of gray,
and the clients really wanted to bring in some color.
And I love the rug.
That is one of my favorite pieces in the home.
It's custom designed.
One of the challenges we had
in this space was a mail slot that was just
in the middle of the wall.
So I actually ended up finding these really fun shelves,
and we created a whole moment around the mail slot.
We found this oddly shaped oval mirror
that fit the spot perfectly.
- Yeah, it gives a little funkiness to it.
I'm seeing a little art in this space.
It's sort of my introduction to some of the art in the home.
Are these all existing pieces,
or pieces you chose when you guys did the update?
- The artwork is all existing, and in the entry way,
it's really fun, because they are huge Justice League fans.
They have three kids under the age of five,
and then Mom and Dad are probably the biggest fans of all.
She had this original Wonder Woman painting
that I just loved, and so we wanted to make that front
and center in the entryway.
When you walk in, see it.
- That's great.
And it just kind of sets the tone when you first go,
and you go, "All right, this is gonna be a fun home,"
so let's go up to, where, I love this space.
And you really, I mean,
this is so dramatically different.
Anyone who was to go in that space would go like,
"Okay, what are we gonna do with this?"
- Exactly. We call it the Octagon room.
It's only got four windows,
but if it was a complete half moon, it would be an octagon.
This is the family room gathering area,
and they love to get together
with their kids, make popcorn, watch movies.
Right away I thought, okay, a custom curved sofa,
as well as a custom ottoman
that you can put your feet up on,
and that ottoman I had upholstered in vinyl,
rather than regular leather, just to keep it indestructible,
and they love it.
They hang out there and cuddle together on a nightly basis.
It's the fun family room.
- And it's very much like a cocoon in there,
because you have the texture of the wallpaper.
How did you identify what blue you wanted to use,
and then complement that with wallpaper?
Everything's like this sort of envelope of blue,
if you will.
- There are actually 12 different paint colors
in this house, as you'll see with some of the other rooms.
But there are a few different shades
of blue that we've used, and I kept the blues,
because you can see numerous different rooms at one time,
and I want that sight line to work nicely together
without being jarring, or without feeling like the house
is like a rainbow of colors.
So there are different tones
of blue throughout the first floor.
- [Rick] It's beautiful.
No lack of bookshelves to style here.
- Exactly. Yeah, that was a challenge.
I mean, we needed to find quite a few accessories,
but one nice thing is the wife's father loves to work
with wood, and he, as a hobby,
he loves to make things out of wood.
And so he's made quite a few
of the accessories that we have on the shelves here.
We were able to incorporate some
of the homeowners' cherished items.
And then the rest, we have some framed photos.
It's really nice to be able to bring in some personality
into the home, onto the shelves without overdoing it.
- [Rick] Yeah, I think it's a really nice balance there.
Let's go into the living room. Tell me about this space.
- We really wanted to work with the blue,
but incorporate a few pops of color.
The layout in here was actually the biggest challenge,
because it's a large room, it's about 15 by 30 feet.
It feels strange to have three seating areas,
because the family room nook is also in this same space.
So we decided to make the game table the space
in front of the bookshelves, and then the area
in front of the fireplace became the main living space.
So I landed on doing the sofa
across from the fireplace using a lot of curved elements,
because kids, they have animals, people running around.
We needed to have some good circulation.
So I typically like to stay away
from pointy corners when I have a family with young kids.
So we have the oval-shaped coffee table, the curved sofa,
and then we have a couple
of swivel chairs in front of the window.
And the reason I chose to do these chairs
in front of the window and the sofa
across from the fireplace was to let the light in.
We found an awesome sofa
that has some interesting curved metal element
to the back of it.
So it has some design interest
when you actually see it from the back.
Some people may find walking into the back
of a sofa a little bit controversial,
because in feng shui design, that's kind of a no-no.
I chose to break that rule,
because I didn't think it was gonna work any other way.
And it's a low sofa, so it actually doesn't even feel
like you're walking into it when you walk into this space.
- [Rick] So tell me, what is above the fireplace?
That's really interesting.
- Oh, we got so lucky when we found this piece of art.
It's a beautiful sculptural piece.
They are kiln-fired porcelain discs,
made by an artist named CJ Nash.
And the colors are great.
They're just perfect for over the fireplace,
where there really wasn't enough room
for a painting or a mirror,
unless it was going to be real skinny and linear.
And I just wasn't feeling that.
I wanted this space to be more organic.
- So when you first come in the home,
you can go to the left, sort of that living area,
or you go immediately to the right,
and that's the dining space.
So tell me a little bit about the dining space.
- This dining room was such a dream to work on.
I love trying to make a dining room interesting.
This wallpaper is so dreamy,
and the window treatments in the dining room
are just my favorite fabric of all time.
It's an alpaca wool.
The table, I love this finish that we chose.
It's white wood with some awesome metal detail.
And then the console, this chunky wooden piece
with so much texture and design interest,
just brings in that artsy, creative look
that these clients were really looking for.
- [Rick] All right.
So from the dining, all right, you've had a big meal,
you wanna go take a nap.
Let's go into the primary bedroom.
Walk me through this space. Just amazing.
- [Laura] This is where we get to do the wow factor.
And we started with that wallpaper
on the ceiling as our inspiration.
At first, we weren't sure
if we wanted to do the wallpaper on the walls,
and just do a solid dark color, like the blue ceiling.
But we ended up with the wallpaper
on the ceiling, blue walls, and then again,
bringing in the brighter colors in the window treatments,
on the bed, in order to not make the room feel too dark,
and it doesn't.
It actually feels like a nice big room,
and just a really good balance of light and dark colors.
- The wallpaper in the space,
since they're Justice League fans,
almost could feel like a scene,
like a character's moving almost, right?
It has an energy to it.
- It does feel like there are some faces in there.
And that's what I love
about that wallpaper is how it's abstract,
and you can see different things every time you look at it,
or create your own story.
- So you've been in business formally for a couple years,
but you've been doing this for a while.
You were designing for someone else.
You said, "Hey, I'm gonna break out on my own."
Give me a little feel for how you like to work with clients,
and what role did Houzz play in your success
as you've been growing your business?
- Well, the first thing I did when I went out on my own
was to connect with Houzz.
We use it in our business every day, creating invoices,
purchase orders, proposals, and advertising,
because Houzz is the go-to place for potential clients
who don't already know of a designer
they might wanna work with.
- All right, so this is a young family,
and, of course, they wanna make it fun for the kids.
So we got a couple more spaces:
the nursery, and I think the kids' bathroom,
you did something really fun.
Why don't we start with the nursery,
and we'll do the bathroom too?
- Okay, so I love designing nurseries, and in nurseries,
it's really fun to go with a theme.
I'm not always a theme-y type, but in the nursery,
or maybe in a powder room, themes are really fun.
So in this nursery, we decided to go with this forest theme.
You can see it in the rug.
We have a bird cage floor lamp that is just so adorable.
The ceiling light also has a bird cage feel to it.
We have the stars for the night sky and the wallpaper.
We have a little table that kind of feels like a creature.
Lots of little details of the forest theme.
And we do have a day bed in there for Mom,
so that when she's nursing, she can go in there, relax,
maybe take a nap read,
but that's for her to have her little nap as well.
- Really beautiful. What a cozy space.
Lucky, lucky kid.
All right. Tell me about this bathroom.
- [Laura] They just wanted to just,
let's make this bathroom fun.
Kid's bath.
And we found this amazing wallpaper that actually
is a nod to Mom, who is a former swimmer,
and also just loves vintage, vintage anything.
This brings back to the 1960s.
And she's also a swim coach.
So when we found this,
we thought it was perfect for this family.
It's so fun to work with color, pattern,
and just to get creative.
Don't be afraid to do that.
- Well, thank you so much, Laura.
It's been great having you walk us through the space.
Congratulations on all your hard work.
Can't wait to see how your your business grows.
- Thank you so much, Rick. Bye-bye.
- [Rick] See you. Bye-bye.