Griffith Park Client Library and Powder Room Intro

It’s Ginny here with our final intro at the Griffith Park house we’ve been designing. To recap, these are all the rooms we’ve been working on and have introduced you to so far – Sunroom, Living Room, Dining Room, Master Bedroom and Dining Nook.

Todays post encompasses two rooms that didn’t need too much help so we combined them into one post. First up – the library:

This is a beautiful wooden clad space that is perfect for hunkering down and watching English crime dramas when June gloom hits LA (or that’s what I’d personally do… has anyone watched The Fall yet? I’m behind, I know!)

They already had their eye on a sofa and chairs from Lawson Fenning but wanted help with fabric selection and general guidance on what else to do in here.

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This client has really great taste so we loved what they had already selected. We picked out a pretty silver-grey velvet for the sofa and a solid, and slightly darker grey for the chairs. Let’s just talk about the two pieces individually. The sofa is Lawson’s curved back sofa. I love this piece because it’s a great one for floating in the middle of the room – for obvious reasons that are not-so hidden it the name. The chairs are beautifully crafted and are perfect for floating in the middle of a room as well. I love a good club chair and the contrasting leather piping helps make this traditional chair feel more modern. Believe me when I say that this is not sponsored by Lawson Fenning (nor did we even get an extra discount). They are one of EHD’s fave stores in LA. They have an amazing selection of vintage and in-house designed furniture pieces, like these two, as well as an array of local/hand made accessories. You can customize their furniture with their selection of fabric and wood bases. If nothing else, check it out for inspiration if you are in LA. 

We considered adding a larger area rug here but, size-wise, we agreed that the floating rug would actually work better (Emily still thinks in a perfect world it would be larger and ran the length of the room, but she thinks it works as is as well) . This room is a transition room between the entryway and the sunroom (which you can see in the background), so we didn’t love the idea of blocking the walkways. We gave the recommendation on adding the mirrors to behind the shelves in the wall panelling, which helps to bounce light in here.

There was talk of changing out the media cabinet to something less Danish Mid-Century style and we did suggest some black lacquered vintage pieces. We didn’t love the idea of bringing in another tone of wood because of the floor and walls, and a color other than white didn’t feel quite right. Not fully convinced by the idea of a black pieces of furniture, our client – in his inquisitive ways – actually used black contact paper and applied it to the Mid-Century cabinet doors. I bet you couldn’t tell until I told you, right? After he’d done that we stopped hunting for pieces because he is satisfied. Again, in my professional opinion, this piece could be more interesting, however it’s simplicity and solidity is a great backdrop for the chairs and allows for the wall panelling to be the star of the show.

No doubt we’ll style out and shoot this space, because why the heck not.

Now the powder room.

This again wasn’t a primary project for us to tackle, but as we delved more into the design of other areas the clients wanted us to weigh in on this room. It already had a pretty chair rail detail, so it was clear to us that we needed to wallpaper. We found this beautiful fan-like metallic that comes in silver and gold. We ultimately decided on the silver (or onyx, as it’s called) which picked up and highlighted the chrome bathroom fixtures.

This room has no natural daylight and is directly off a corridor which also with no natural light. No second hand light makes it quite hard to shoot. We just had to show you this wallpaper because it’s beautiful. I also really appreciate the fixtures in this room with the deco style towel bar and octagonal shaped sink. I personally am a sucker for anything that feels slightly traditional so these plumbing fixtures are a delight to look at.

There is part of me that wants to paint the bottom half of the wall black to match the wallpaper to give it that extra dramatic look. But this room is a low priority now that we have the wallpaper in and have other rooms to finish up. We have since added a couple of pieces of art in here and would love to replace the wood Demi-lune with something more deco-inspired, so stay tuned for the afters!

Thanks to everyone who has followed & commented on the intros to this house. We really love how everything has turned out and although we’re almost done, we still have a few bits to find before shooting. We are currently pitching this out to magazines and online publications, so fingers crossed.

Again – see the sunroom, living room, dining room, master bedroom and dining nook.

P.S.  A few readers commented during the dining nook post that my (Ginny’s) writing style/my overall thoughts to working with this particular client came across negative. I’m so sorry! Some people may or may not know that I am English and even though we do speak the same language, my written and spoken words can often be misconstrued. I would NEVER, ever intentionally say anything to upset or disrespect any of our clients (and they weren’t offended, either). Working with a designer is a very personal experience and we do become friends. We are hired to challenge our clients and push them into doing things they wouldn’t normally do or haven’t thought of for themselves and sometimes they don’t agree and that’s all good. So, if I suggest for them to paint a room or switch out a light fixture or make the drapes longer, that’s my professional opinion and since we blog about each project (and they agree to transparent blogging beforehand) they know that we are going to be honest and tell you just that. It is ultimately down to the them to decide to heed our advice or not, and we support them no matter what and help them create the rooms of THEIR dreams, not ours. More often than not, it’s our clients who get the biggest giggles out of reading our posts – because we are friendly. There’s a lot of picture perfect things on social media theses days and we’d rather be honest and open about our process because it’s real life, whether it’s the good, the bad or the ugly.