Creature Comforts
Jeffrey Alan Marks at home, with grounds by Montecito Landscape. The designer selected lighting from his personal collections (for Palecek and Progress Lighting), along with Palecek's Dockside chairs, William Laman hurricane candles, a Santa Barbara Designs umbrella, and a Vincent Van Duysen Franks table from Sutherland Furniture.
Jeffrey Alan Marks adds a California vibe to an English cottage
Written by Cathy Whitlock | Photographs by Sam Frost
There is no better way to observe a designer’s aesthetic than with a peek into their own interiors, since these invariably showcase their talents and offer insights into their personal style. While William Shakespeare famously said, “The eyes are the window to your soul,” a home’s décor runs a close second.
Interior designer Jeffrey Alan Marks’s latest home represents his California lifestyle with husband, Greg, 2-year-old daughter James, and a lab named Coalie. Leaving his cliffside Santa Monica residence of 15 years, Marks was drawn to Montecito for its proximity to the Santa Barbara airport, the inimitable Southern California sunlight, and the combination of an English cottage with a mountain view.
The La Jolla native had one primary goal in mind for the home, which was originally built as a summer cottage in 1928: making it a “modern house for today’s living.” That began by taking the structure practically down to the studs and adding extra square footage to accommodate the view of majestic pines while keeping the house’s integrity with its windows and shutters. Marks’s roots and life journeys set the style for the three-bedroom cottage and guest house. “I lived in La Jolla and on the East Coast, and my training was in London, where I went to school. I wanted an English cottage with a modern twist,” he says. “I knew exactly what I wanted and did a lot of shopping for the house in England.”
“I really built the house for our daughter, James—where it’s colorful and family oriented.”
The result is pure Marks—tailored yet informal, sophisticated yet cozy with natural materials, contrasting woods, harmonious colors, and a laidback vibe. Often known for his breezy beach-color palettes, Marks added forest green as an accent to the kitchen he designed with the British firm Plain English. A painting of the Provincetown pier that Greg—an art director, producer, and graphic designer formerly with Saks Fifth Avenue—gave him as a wedding gift suggested the colors in the living room. “I tried to get away from a lot of blue as I didn’t want it to feel like a beach house even though we are close by,” the designer says. Red is used as a “punctuation point,” he explains. “Something I have never dealt with were punches of red, which you see in the chandelier and painting.”
Marks sourced items for the house’s furnishings from his own collections, noting, “I used a lot of my own Waterside and Oceanview collections from Kravet, as well as some of my old faves from Palecek and A. Rudin.” Blue plays a predominant role in the master bedroom and an adjacent nook that’s a favorite reading spot for father-daughter time. The blue-and-white toile in the daughter’s playroom is a nostalgic nod to Marks’s days as a college intern at the venerable London firm of Colefax and Fowler. He hoped “to bring a little bit of that era into my design and really built the house for her, where it’s colorful and family oriented with little pops of color. I am lucky that I got a baby I could decorate for!”
The sectional from Howe London (covered with Rose Tarlow fabric) and a unique grouping of art are just a few of the distinctive features in this relaxed family room. Marks mixed in fabrics from his own collection at Kravet.
No cottage would be complete without a proper English garden. While the designer worked with Montecito Landscape, he put his personal stamp on the design. “I wanted it to feel like a house in East Hampton”—where the couple also resides part-time—“with the expanse of a lawn, a fire pit and room to run, and a garden that was not too fussy and English.” The space also provides a place for James to display her talents as a budding gardener. “She likes to garden with me,” he says, “and it’s nice to teach her all about vegetables, planting trees and bulbs, and that has made her a little more grounded.”
Introduced to national audiences as one of the stars on Bravo’s highly addictive Million Dollar Decorators, today Marks is one of nation’s most influential designers with projects that range from London and Nantucket to Los Angeles and Newport Beach. The work has landed him on Elle Decor’s A-List and the pages of The Hollywood Reporter and Architectural Digest, to name a few. He continues to make his mark with lines from The Shade Store and a Point Dume collection with Progress Lighting, and in 2013 the multifaceted designer also added author to his resume with the publication of The Meaning of Home (Rizzoli New York).
The new residence is one of his proudest achievements. “For me it was all about the mix and making it eclectic.” which he accomplished, for example, by pairing a woven rope table with a room of antiques. “During the first seven years with a child, you want to hunker down for a while,” he says. “I wanted the house to feel grounded and substantial—like we have been here for a long time.”
