Course Correction
After trying 12 months in the Northeast, designer Jeffrey Alan Marks and family hightailed it back to California
Light streams into the living and dining rooms through expansive clerestory windows. Favorite pieces here include Lindsey Adelman’s Knotty Bubbles chandelier, a Charlotte Perriand coffee table, an original Saladino Cape Sofa, and a wool-and-bamboo silk Windansea Cool rug from Marks’s collection with The Rug Company.
Written by David Nash
Photographs by Trevor Tondro
Thomas Wolfe got it wrong: You can most definitely go home again. And had the novelist been raised in Santa Barbara instead of Asheville, North Carolina, one could easily imagine the sun-soaked impression it might have made on his literary output.
For prolific interior designer—and Southern California native—Jeffrey Alan Marks, it took only a year away from the coastal town, where the Santa Ynez Mountains connect to the Pacific Ocean, to appreciate what his family was missing. “We took a sojourn, as it were, with our then-4-year-old daughter to Connecticut,” he says. “And we were sort of going between there and the Hamptons trying to live the East Coast life.” But Marks; his husband, Greg; daughter James, now 6; and the yellow lab, Sister, had a collective change of heart. “I mean, the summers there are great and all, but, yeah, we decided we needed to be back in California for all our sakes.”
Before long—with their real estate agent on speed dial, a moving truck at the ready, and visions of Santa Barbara sunsets glistening in their minds’ eyes—the couple zeroed in on a modest slice of West Coast paradise. “It was very quick—we bought the house last fall and moved in by May,” Marks says of the whirlwind return. What they found, perched on just over three and a half acres at the top of Montecito, was wholly different from the more traditional properties they’d owned before.
“We decided we needed to be back in California for all our sakes. Traditional is not in our vocabulary.”
Designed and built in 1974 by Jack Lionel Warner and Paul Gray’s newly formed architecture firm, Warner & Gray, the 4,200-square-foot, three-bedroom, four-bathroom contemporary retreat was the kick in the pants the family needed. “It wasn’t very much of a family house,” Marks says, noting it had been conceived for a very private couple. But after seeing the property, “going traditional wasn’t in our vocabulary.”
Energized by the challenges the unfamiliar layout presented, Marks took a relatively short seven months to reimagine the home. “I had never lived in something this contemporary before,” he says about the home’s strict modernist lines. “My first instinct was to wallpaper the whole thing, soften it a bit, lighten the floors, and expand some rooms.”
From the pool deck, the family has a bird’s-eye view of the town below and out to the Pacific Ocean.
“You almost feel like you’re in an indoor-outdoor home, [and] we’re basically in the pool every afternoon when James gets home from school.”
One of the biggest transformations was to the heart of the home. “We completely gutted the chef’s kitchen—which is not the way we live—and opened it up to the pool area,” he says. “You almost feel like you’re in an indoor-outdoor home because the windows are always open, and we’re basically in the pool every afternoon when James gets home from school.” To keep the kitchen from looking too stark, Marks worked with a metal fabricator to create the culinary epicenter’s “wonderfully patinated” zinc walls, shelving, and backsplash, which make the space feel a bit edgier than a typically pristine kitchen. “We’re not great chefs, but we do spend a lot of time here, so I wanted something a little more playful and different.”
In the sitting room that leads into the primary bedroom suite, Marks collaborated with de Gournay to develop Bohemian Jungle, the reflective foil wallpaper print that envelops the space where “we pile up before bed to watch television or read a book—it’s just aglow at night.” He adds, “I thought it was a perfect way to get my beachy vibe into this house and not make it feel too traditional.” The designer’s home office also benefited from a coastal influence—with a textural Phillip Jeffries grass cloth wall covering and a lacquered ceiling evocative of watery reflections—that was anything but literal. “I do a lot of work from home, and it’s great to be inspired by the view and the light.”
Elsewhere, the home is connected living and dining spaces—lit by expansive clerestory windows on one side and opening to sweeping ocean views on the other—that are the repository for favorite family pieces that complement the modern setting. In the main gathering spot, a Knotty Bubbles chandelier by Lindsey Adelman is suspended over a mid-‘60s Charlotte Perriand coffee table, while a hand-knotted wool-and-bamboo silk rug from Marks’s collection with The Rug Company, aptly named Windansea Cool (after the legendary La Jolla beach he frequented growing up), softens the cozy vignette.
The designer collaborated with de Gournay to create Bohemian Jungle, a reflective foil wallpaper print cladding the sitting room walls.
In a fitting homage to a great mentor, there’s an original Cape Sofa by John Saladino. “I think [the sofa] adds a very casual element to the room, and I thought it was important, given we were friends and where we live,” Marks says about the famed designer, who died in Montecito last summer at age 86 (but not before writing the foreword to Marks’s recent book, This is Home).
Ultimately, when making the decision to return to their roots, the family realized it all came down to perspective. “The house is at the very tip-top of the hill overlooking San Ysidro Ranch, and we love having this experience after living in the forest of Connecticut,” Marks says. “We needed to get out—and up.” Don’t expect a descent from the clouds anytime soon. “We’re here to stay for a while,” he says. “This is definitely home.”
