In The Colony, a tightly held enclave of the Hollywood Hills where mid-century houses survive in unusual numbers, a 1960 residence by Whitney R. Smith carries the quiet authority of a building that knew exactly what it wanted to be. Smith, a Case Study House architect and co-founder of Smith & Williams, belonged to the generation of Southern California modernists treated sawtooth ceilings and angular geometries as instruments for light, pulling it down into the volumes at measured intervals. The brief handed to Ome Dezin was less a renovation than a negotiation with that intelligence.
The studio recognized early that the architecture would lead, and that the real discipline lay in restraint. Renovations through the 1980s and 1990s had blurred the home’s original logic, and the work became one of subtraction as much as addition. This required refining proportions, recovering flow, and resisting the temptation to over-design a house. The custom spiral staircase, the ceiling heights, and the structural rhythm were preserved rather than reinterpreted.
A warm, grounded palette of rich woods, plaster, and tonal stone counterweights the sculptural drama of the architecture. The staircase, its curve resolving in a bold red underside, becomes the room’s highlight, a graphic gesture set against otherwise calm surfaces. An oversized pivot door opens into a double-height foyer where gallery proportions and the sawtooth ceiling deliver a deliberate flood of daylight.
Ome Dezin looked to Milan, and to Villa Necchi Campiglio in particular, Piero Portaluppi’s 1930s villa of lacquered surfaces, controlled luxury, and rooms that hold their composure under pressure. That sensibility surfaces in the color pairings and the low, structured furniture sourced from Dusty Deco, Made by Choice, NO GA, and Kallemo.
A shared bath in the second wing commits fully to a lemony yellow, its copper accents and glass brick reading as period-correct mid-century optimism rather than pastiche. The primary suite, set under original high ceilings with a loft-like openness, trades color for a minimalist composure, its bathroom framing a clean view of the hills above the vanity. Graphic works from Creative Art Partners punctuate the calm at intervals.
To learn more about the studio behind the design, visit omedezin.com.
Photography by Patrick Biller with styling by Lisa Rowe.
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