Innehållsförteckning för Home Design 2024 från Sunset

Despite the fact that the average person will spend nearly one third of their life in bed, the humble art of bed making is deeply underappreciated. In this, our annual Home and Design issue, we celebrate many more glamorous and dramatic facets of what it means to make a home in the West. There’s a tour of a stunning home in Del Mar that sets the high bar for coastal living (handsome pickleball court included) and an expansive garden in the Bay Area with year-round rotating vegetable crops and an abundant cutting garden of roses and other seasonal blossoms. For the more project-minded, we’ve got tips on how to survive a never-ending remodel, a guide to stylish and sustainable landscaping, and ideas for how to make your chicken coop more…

ON THE LIST of favorite local pastimes and preoccupations in Santa Barbara, from surfing to wine tasting to farm-to-table cuisine to hiking, real-estate-obsessing is at the top. It’s easy to see why. People want to move there, home inventory is low, and the possibilities—street after street of charming bungalows, modern ranches, and Mediterranean mansions—are plentiful. So for a city with roughly 100,000 residents, there is an out-sized, thriving community of interior designers, house flippers, remodelers, home stagers, hoteliers, and vacation rental managers who design and build living quarters of all kinds across town. Then there are people like sisters-in-law Katie Labourdette-Martinez and Olivia Wahler of Hearth Home Interiors, who manage to do all of the above, and have been actively shaping the cozy-coastal aesthetic the breezy beach town is known for…

FUNCTION WITH FLAIR When it comes to dreaming up her perfect coop, Kate always starts with function before deciding on design details. First figure out run size, roosting areas, number of nesting boxes and where storage will live for supplies, so you can piece together the perfect layout for your space. From there Kate adds in details and decor elements that might seem over the top from the standard utilitarian set up. She’s known for using unexpected paint colors, patterned wallpaper, and gingerbread trim that make the entire space more aesthetically interesting while fitting in with her own home’s style and architecture. Here Kate shares six important features where function can be elevated stylishly for your fab feathered friends. 1 /Ventilation: Proper coop ventilation is incredibly important to the health of…

Avocado Green Mattress: Good sleep and wellbeing are at the top of my priority list, so I’m thrilled to have certified organic Avocado Green mattresses on our beds. They’re more durable, breathable, and supportive than those made with synthetic materials. Benjamin Moore: Benjamin Moore offers incredibly durable paints that stand up to years of wear and tear, so it was a no-brainer to use the iconic brand throughout this property. We spend so much time within the walls of our home, so it’s an area where quality reigns supreme. I love how a simple, fresh coat of paint can bring out the beauty of a room. Burdge Architects: We worked with Doug Burdge and team to create a sophisticated, modern concept that elevates our beach bungalow—without sacrificing the indoor-outdoor “barefoot living”…

Leslie Bennett, award-winning garden designer and owner of Pine House Edible Gardens, is revealing her signature style secrets in her new book, Garden Wonderland. Filled with inspiration on how to incorporate personal and edible elements into any landscape, we asked Leslie to share the five key design considerations to achieve the iconic Pine House Edible Gardens look so you can create a plant-filled wonderland of your own. • Edging With Evergreens: A garden wonderland includes plants for harvest of food, flowers, medicine, and more. Since many of these harvest plants are highly changeable and can fade or entirely disappear from your landscape during parts of the year, use evergreen plants to create a year-round visual framework for your outdoor areas. • Be Choice With Color: Pick a few foliage and…

Hollywood and Vine has always been an intersection of dreams, the sidewalks studded with the names of movie stars, the Pantages and El Capitan theaters just up the way, the iconic Capitol Records tower rising over it all. It’s a fertile historical backdrop for a neighborhood that’s now home to Netflix and numerous “techtainment” businesses. And an organic extension of that creative resurgence is the Aster, a hybrid boutique hotel and membership club that’s flipped the script on the ever-evolving social club model. In the past decade, there’s been a boom in social clubs in the West, part of a global phenomenon that saw the traditional members club expanded upon in dozens of iterations: the women’s-only club, the creative class club, the tech club, the luxe fitness/wellness club. As co-working…

Every spring native plant fans descend on L.A. for one of the most impressive displays of spectacular native gardens in the West. On April 13 and 14, a mix of 37 homes, schools, and public spaces around Los Angeles will open their landscapes to the public for the 2024 Native Plant Garden Tour. Hosted by the Theodore Payne Foundation—California’s pioneering native plant nursery—the tour showcases stunning displays of biodiversity, inspiring visitors to develop their own native landscape, with benefits as plentiful as the flora. California native landscapes use 80% less water than conventional gardens, provide food and shelter for pollinators and other wildlife, and require very little maintenance once plants have matured. “See a biodiversity refuge amidst the ruins of industrial L.A. at the iconic Casa Apocalyptica native plant garden,…

SPRING STAPLES It’s hard for any gardener to choose favorites, but when it comes to powerhouse plants that will give you the greatest return, Jess shares her four go-to and easy-to-grow herby hard hitters that you can incorporate into your garden or homemade remedies now. 1. Nasturtium: Quick to germinate in any soil type, their gorgeous lily padshaped leaves and vibrant blooms are antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and can be used to soothe lingering spring colds and sore throats. Interplant with other crops as a beautiful double duty pollinator attractor and pest deterrent. Not only do they add a spicy kick to spring salads or vinaigrettes, their orange blooms are a natural dye, turning fabrics and fibers a lovely shade of pale salmon pink. 2. Lavender: With uses so wide-reaching that it is often…

Was it the rotisserie chicken or the pickles? The falafel flecked with bright green herbs and freshly toasted spices, fried until crackling brown, stuffed into wraps or adorning bowls dotted with pickled vegetables and lashed with zhoug? Whatever it was, word got out that Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson knew how to cook Middle Eastern cuisine, and folks thronged their stall Madcapra at L.A.’s Grand Central Market. L.A. is no stranger to all the iterations of this pan-national culinary tradition, thanks to its countless rotisserie chicken shops, shawarma joints, and falafel stands, so that’s saying something. It was at their second restaurant Kismet, an airy proper sitdown restaurant in Los Feliz, where they truly established themselves as purveyors of a third wave Middle Eastern-Mediterranean-Californian cooking. Their followup Kismet Rotisserie raised…

SOUTHWEST Whitney Saggboy is a proud born-and-raised Moabite. Growing up as a Navajo woman in one of the West’s most notable regions for natural beauty, she has a deep passion for the outdoors, whether that be hiking, mountain biking, paddle boarding, or kayaking. When she’s not trail running with her pooch Crimson alongside her fiancé, you can find her guiding at Wild West Voyages, where we met on a session paddling down the Colorado River. Here, Saggboy shares her local tips on how to enjoy this quirky town located in a unique corner of the American West. This month: Moab, Utah The insider: Whitney Saggboy, General Manager, Wild West Voyages STAY At the newly opened ULUM Moab, you can “have all the comforts of a luxury hotel while being immersed in…

Not long ago, the uninitiated may have identified Korean food with all-you-can eat barbeque or late night karaoke bar hopping in K-Town. But these days, eager eaters can experience the nuanced diversity of Korean cuisine well beyond the streets of Koreatown, and in imaginative, refined ways that the genre deserves. It’s fitting that over the past decade this movement has continued to evolve in subtle and thrilling ways ways in Los Angeles, home to the largest population of Koreans outside Asia, making way for a vibrant, multi-generational community of culinary creatives. Here are some of the newest and most delicious ways to get a taste.…

When one thinks about a production garden designed to yield copious amounts of vegetables and flowers, it’s not often one with perfectly manicured rows overflowing with color and paired with thoughtfully organized spaces for gathering. Practicality and function are usually the focus, not a dedication to stunning surroundings. This is where the team behind Oakland-based Pine House Edible Gardens stands out with their impeccable layout and design philosophies, showcasing the ability to implement important functional garden systems with incredible style. This “homestead” garden located in Walnut Creek, California changes the way we think about what a hardworking garden can look like. Designed as a modern take on a formal potager style garden, it’s intentionally laid out to maximize the space for access and harvest. It has some of the elements…

SAN FRANCISCO ITALIAN food is a Western culinary treasure. While for decades the city was mostly known for the red sauce pleasures of the old restaurants in the historically Italian enclave of North Beach, a lovely thing happened over the years: the whole Alice Waters-inspired obsession for local ingredients merged with a hyper-regional Italian approach to technique and preparations, and a new kind of California-Italian cuisine was born. Pioneering restaurants such as Pizzeria Delfina (which served much more than pizza) and A16 (which was inspired by the highway that runs through the Southern Italian region of Campania) set the stage for more restaurants practicing an exacting, ingredient-obsessed kind of cooking. And there is Flour + Water, the Mission district restaurant devoted to perfecting the art of fresh pasta. In inspiration and…

“ULTIMATELY, CREATING A COMFORTABLE AND WELCOMING SPACE IS ABOUT EXPRESSING YOUR UNIQUE TASTE AND STYLE.” Gulla Jónsdóttir is an Icelandic architect known for her dynamic forms that have found their way into award-winning projects in the West like the La Peer Hotel, Palmilla in Newport Beach, and the Sandbourne in Santa Monica, the latter of which is set to open this spring. From her Los Angelesbased design studio, she shares insights on how to integrate organic beauty and function into your own home. At the La Peer or the restaurant space at Palmilla there are lots of global influences and eclectic pieces that somehow don’t clash. What are some tips for how to bring elements of great hotel design into your own home without having it feel busy or disjointed?…