Room of the Day: A Glamorous Space With a Bohemian Touch

An overwhelming fireplace surround and too much white paint made this large living space a snooze. And the homeowner, who has lived all over the world (London, New York City, Hong Kong, India) had tired of much of the furniture she’d been lugging from country to country for years. Ready to start fresh in her new San Francisco home, she hit Houzz and found a home she loved, called Chez Noz. The home belonged to interior designer Noz Nozawa, who also lives in the city. The two connected, and the result of their collaboration is a bold, bright and happy room that expresses the homeowner’s favorite style, which Nozawa classifies as “China marble bohemian meets Hollywood glamour.”

 China marble Living Room by Noz Design

Living Area at a Glance

What happens here: Relaxing, dining, entertaining friends, reading, TV watching, napping

Location: San Francisco

Size: About 250 square feet (23.2 square meters)

Designer: Noz Nozawa

“The home was clean, modern and marketable but didn’t have any personality. It felt drab,” Nozawa says. “My client works and travels a lot and really wanted a place that was a dream to come home to.” 

The design began with a deep navy wall. “It adds a lot of contrast for all of the bright whites and really makes them stand out,” she says. In addition to living all around the world, the homeowner has traveled extensively. “She had a lot of furniture she’d picked up around the world, and realized she didn’t care about a lot of it. She wanted to start fresh here,” Nozawa says. The designer helped her client cull through all of it, putting the bulk of it on Craigslist to sell and putting a few pieces in storage for her client’s adult son. She kept two case pieces to use as a TV cabinet and corner bookcase, and kept the colorful artwork on either side of the balcony doors. 

Wall paint: Hale Navy, Benjamin Moore

With the navy nailed down, the white standing out and the favorite existing pieces chosen, Nozawa and the homeowner were ready to incorporate a favorite color. 

“She loves yellow, and I wanted to give her something big that was truly yellow, not a toned-down ocher but an unapologetic full yellow,” Nozawa says. The tufted linen chair is cushy and envelops her client like a big hug. The felt top on the mango stool and the golden tones of the throw pillows pick up on the hue. “The yellow really brings in happiness,” she says. “And it makes me really happy that she loves it so much.” 

The gunmetal Sputnik chandelier helps delineate the living area from the rest of the space, as does the Beni Ourain-inspired rug. The sectional is custom-sized to fit the room. “I don’t often put the chaise on the side that’s in the middle of the room, but she works and travels so much that when she has some downtime, she needs that chaise as her spot to lounge, be super comfortable and watch her favorite shows,” the designer says. 

Chair: Anthropologie; stool: Turn, Blu Do

The fireplace surround needed a major face-lift. It was covered in a dark gray quartz that matched the kitchen counters. “The surround was uninspired, so drab and felt like they had glued a kitchen counter vertically to the wall,” Nozawa says. Her client liked the texture of stacked stone but was nervous that the different colors and patterns in a natural stone would be too busy. Instead, the designer found a textured white tile from Porcelanosa that has a stacked-stone-like texture but a consistent color and finish. 

“She basically shopped my house and absolutely had to have the same mirror that I have,” Nozawa says. “She didn’t care where we put it, but she had to have it!” The designer found that the fireplace was just the spot. The mirror has a faux-porcupine-quill frame that pops against the white tile. “It’s fake; I promise no porcupines were injured in the making of this mirror,” Nozawa says with a laugh. 

The coffee table has a geometric wood base. “I really like the tight geometry of the coffee table layered on top of the looser geometry in the rug,” she says.

China marble Living Room by Noz Design

Noz Design

“Entertaining close friends is very important to her. She’s the first of her friends to land in San Francisco, and she has visitors almost constantly,” Nozawa says. “With her son grown up, it’s the first time she’s really invested in a home that she lives in alone, and she’s so excited to share it with her friends.”

The open floor plan includes the kitchen (not shown; it’s located where this photo was taken from) and the dining area. Nozawa chose a midcentury classic Saarinen table and a mix of chairs that include oak, woven, caned and leather textures.

 Beach Style Dining Room by Noz Design

Noz Design

“You’d think the caned canopy chair was one of her pieces, but I actually picked it up to fit in with her existing ornate wood pieces,” Nozawa says. She rounded out the seating at the table with classic Hans Wegner Wishbone chairs and a leather chair from Hem, which she likens to “sitting in a baseball mitt.” 

Finally, how have we not talked about the wallpaper yet? Well, it was the last thing the homeowner was able to commit to, but as they neared the end of the process, the designer had built a lot of trust. “This was a big white wall, and rather than a gallery wall mishmash of photos, which we considered, we wanted to go for something really bold and glam,” she says. 

The paper, made by Porter Teleo, is made just like a Rorschach test — artist’s ink is poured onto Japanese paper, which is then folded in half to create a mirror image; each roll has one long blot pattern on it. No two rolls are exactly alike. The company custom-matched the ink blot color to the Hale Navy accent wall. 

“We were able to bring to life the feeling she wanted to have when she comes home — it’s a fabulous, glamorous, comfortable and happy space for her,” Nozawa says.