Tour 9 Transportive Mediterranean Homes
The couple turned to AD100 designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard to help open up and reenvision the space. “We built the look around the location,” notes Dee. “Something fresh and easy. The palette: coral stone ivory. And it’s a beautiful Spanish/Mediterranean-style home, so Martyn brought in some Moorish accents, and we’ve also got splashes of blue and white.”—Ariel Foxman
A Tastefully Remodeled 1925 Spanish Colonial
“It looked like the Munsters’ house,” says Kent Belden, CEO and founder of creative management firm The Only Agency (stylists for the likes of Beyoncé, Anne Hathaway, and Lady Gaga are among the clients), who recognized his 1925 Spanish colonial home’s potential and purchased it with his husband, Louis Re, M.D. In 2019, the bicoastal couple tapped dear friend and frequent collaborator, AD100 designer Brigette Romanek, to transform it into a light-filled refuge for the modern age. “The first thing we did was trim back all of the overgrown trees and landscape, which immediately opened it up to all of this beautiful natural light.”
From there, they followed the sun and gutted the place, tearing out walls and ripping up floors, installing updated electrical, gas, and plumbing systems and contemporizing the interior spaces with a creative edge. “I wanted it to be a completely modern take on classic 1920s California-Spanish architecture,” Belden says. “The geometry of the house exudes old Hollywood glamour, the furnishings are modern European with a pop of 1970s rock and roll, and the kitchen is pure 21st century.” —Jennifer Fernandez
John Mellencamp’s Little White Montecito House
On his 1983 album, Uh-Huh, John Mellencamp sang, “Little pink houses for you and me, oh yeah, for you and me.” But, in 2022, the iconic musician is humming about a little white house in Montecito, California. The former ranch is positioned on one of the peaks of Santa Barbara’s Toro Canyon, a perch which yields bracing views all the way out to the Pacific Ocean. Situated on six acres, the retreat is a remote one.
