5 Simply Amazing California Homes

These five California residences will leave you craving the Golden State's sunshine and modern architecture. For more residential inspiration, check out our Country Houses and City Apartments boards on Pinterest and our just-launched Homes website.

1. San Francisco House by CCS Architecture and Subject to Change

 

 

Located amid San Francisco’s winding hills, this 4,000-square-foot abode marks a joint effort between CCS Architecture and Subject to Change. The two teams transformed the residence into a customized hangout spot suitable to host social gatherings for the new occupant, a 30-something entrepreneur. Exuberant bursts of color interact with gallery-like white interiors, tailored to take advantage of hilltop city views.

2. Los Angeles Residence by Minarc

 

“This house is basically an excuse for a kitchen,” says Erla Dögg Ingjaldsdóttir of husband-wife __design duo Minarc. The house in question? An eco-friendly prefab built from the ground up in Los Angeles. Tomato red quartz composite lines the kitchen island’s countertop, a welcome contrast to bamboo cabinetry and an ice-cold mural ofIngjaldsdóttir's native Iceland. Other rooms overflow with eco-consciousness—a hydroponic plant wall delivers a truly back-to-nature experience for those indulging in the master bathroom’s Wetstyle soaking tub.

3. Los Angeles House by Belzberg Architects and Delta Wright

 

 

Interior Design Hall of Famer Hagy Belzberg is no stranger to large-scale projects (revisit the Best of Year–winning Gores Group office if unconvinced). For this 12,000-square-foot single-family home on the Los Angeles ridgeline, Belzberg enlisted the help of Delta Wright for interiors that emphasize family gathering space over all else. Furnishings marry contemporary and vintage—Dutch armchairs circa 1957 mingle with a 21st-century Antonio Citterio sofa in the living room. But the staircase is the home’s pièce de résistance, in true Belzberg style. A spiraling, asymmetrical sculpture in European white oak, it rises 35 feet from basement to oculus.

4. Garrison Residence by Patrick Tighe Architecture and David Dunn Architecture + Interiors

 

 

White, bright, and ultra-contemporary, this sunny Redondo Beach house is signature Patrick Tighe. The prolific designer scattered hexagonal windows around the house’s new corner stair tower—a geometric motif that repeats itself throughout. Materials are few: white porcelain floor tile and anodized aluminum window frames backdrop David Dunn’s selection of vintage-modern furnishings.

5. Pacific Heights House by Messana O'Rorke

 

 

A magenta door in a gray clapboard facade greets those visiting a pair of tiny cottages built as earthquake huts in San Francisco’s stately Pacific Heights neighborhood. Messana O’Rorke unified the two structures by inserting a slender galley kitchen in between, with roofing and end walls in frameless glass. The new resident, a creative consultant, is also an avid furniture collector who searched three entire years for an Egg chair by Arne Jacobsen—rare in tan leather.