Home Is Where The Art Is

Author:Abigail Stone

Interior designer Lauren Waters brings her signature warmth and love of art to a modern home

One of the more challenging parts of an interior designer’s work is getting to know the client well enough to be able to interpret and anticipate their desires. Fortunately, Lauren Waters aced that hurdle years ago. “I’ve been friends with the client’s children since we were young,” she shares. Plus she grew up in Pacific Palisades, around the corner from where the house was being constructed. “It’s pretty surreal to design a home in the neighborhood where I grew up and dreamed of being an interior designer.” 

The clients reached out to Waters when the house was still in the framing stage. “The contractor, the project manager and the architect were all men so the clients felt that the house needed ‘a woman’s touch’,” she remembers. She selected everything from the tile, the plumbing, the paint and the kitchen cabinetry to the furniture, the lighting, and the art and supervised the landscape design, choosing native plants to soften the home’s angular lines. 

“They wanted their home to feel energetic, colorful and full of life,” she explains. “They were interested in adding warmth, softness and color,” she adds. They wanted it to be comfortable and casual enough for every day use while also being durable, inviting and flexible enough to accommodate frequent entertaining. “They really gave me full liberty to play with color, pattern and texture,” she says. White walls, a plethora of natural light and and simple, straightforward materials offered Waters the ideal canvas for the sculptural forms, vintage finds, soft custom goods, warm textures and unique artworks that make up her signature mix. “A lot of the art dictated the furniture and vice versa,” she notes. “We chose pieces that make an immediate impact right from the entrance.”

Art is a potent driver in Waters’ work. From her point of view, interior design is a form of fine art and her passion for art history and the decorative arts strongly influences her design process.  “The clients and I collaborated in the selection of the art and I learned a lot from them,” Waters observes. “They introduced me to some great local galleries and up-and-coming young artists.”

“The first piece we purchased was Muzae Sesay’s Escape Ladder #1, from Part 2 Gallery, which is hung in the double height entryway,” she says, pointing to the piece, which she paired with the Alky Chair by Giancarlo Piretti for Castelli, purchased from Mid-Century LA, and a slate side table. “Sesay’s work is featured in SFMOMA—a fact which clued me into the quality of pieces the client was looking for!” Works by Australia’s indigenous people, like the bird’s eye view maps, collected by the client on their travels to that continent’s small islands, nod to the client’s ties to that part of the world.

The end result thrilled the clients. “Since this home, I’ve collaborated on three more projects with them, including their offices in Santa Monica,” she says.