Creating a luxury home requires more than a few buckets of white paint. But in recent years, champagne has been percolating faster than champagne at award show afterparties in luxury homes across Los Angeles.
“It’s all white and gray, so it’s very light,” said Elliott March, MAWD’s top designer. “For the last three or four years, it was like I was worried about doing something more unique and impactful.”
The city’s sleek, white-spec homes are on display. The pale interior is surrounded by glass walls, allowing prospective buyers to look out over the city (or feel like they’re floating in the smog).
But March, who has designed high-end spaces for affiliates and others and collaborated with architects like Rafael Vinoly, thinks that may and should be changing.
“Los Angeles homes are incorporating more texture and texture,” March said. “We also have more expressive plaster work, more expressive floor stone, and heavily carved wood and veneers.”
March emphasized Los Angeles’ love of clean spaces and the holistic lifestyle of its residents. Buyers can make sure their space supports healthy habits, whether that means detailing the organic origins of all their cotton or creating space for a hyperbaric chamber in their gym. Nowhere else in the world are we so concerned about making sure we’re aligned. (“Some clients actually want a full cryochamber,” he said.)
It’s no wonder it has devastating control over Los Angeles. The climate is suitable for coolness. Whereas in L.A., it doesn’t really matter,” March said. The wealthy in the city seek Zen as much as they seek luxury. That means letting in light, which means a pure white space.
But now that the light-and-white trend has made its way from Kim Kardashian’s home to Target shelves, high-end designers need to be smarter, Murch said.
March said his team keeps an eye on new trends as they emerge. Their job is to lead the way.
They rely on social media to monitor what happens next.
“You’ll see[new trends]on Pinterest, and that’s generally where it starts. Then you start seeing it on Instagram, then it gets filtered through Elle Deco, and then you end up with a product. ” he explained.
In March, exciting experiments begin with the play of light and darkness. Slowly, buyers and developers, perhaps after scrolling through Pinterest, are moving away from the stark white box and starting to embrace other materials, styles, and layouts more openly.
March said there were “huge improvements in sustainable fabrics” that could help persuade people who prefer a white look as a stage for clean living. He’s also looking to materials not traditionally used in residential spaces, such as Quinone, an engineered resin panel sold at high-end retailers like Chanel, and, according to March, woodworking for high-end homes. It is said that it is used to customize products.
“When you combine that with a natural carved stone island or something, you get sunlight reflections and you get this element of sophistication,” he said. “It creates moments that you wouldn’t expect and they work together.”
