How a designer incorporated her client’s beachcombing inspirations into her seaside home.

By Joann Plockova

Always looking for “unique launching points” on projects, architect Laurie Fisher certainly found one when client Janice Myck-Wayne spread a pile of beach pebbles on the kitchen table and declared, “All of these colors need to be in my home.” Myck-Wayne, a professor of education at California State University in Fullerton, and her attorney husband, Paul, commissioned Fisher to build them a new house in the coastal town of Del Mar, California, about 20 miles north of San Diego.

“The thread of those pebbles was constantly in my mind,” says Fisher, who worked side by side with Myck-Wayne on the home’s interior design. “If a client loves light, monochromatic neutrals, then I will pursue a tranquil, clean aesthetic. If the client likes contrast, then they are looking for something more dramatic and energetic.” Fisher makes color part of her first conversation with clients, revealing as it does much about the kinds of spaces in which they will feel at home.

In Myck-Wayne’s case, the playful palette drove the design. “If color is a driving element in the design, then we are consciously creating elements in the design that will showcase colors and have them play off of one another,” Fisher says.

Myck-Wayne had been collecting those pebbles along Del Mar City Beach, a three-mile stretch of Pacific coastline, for years. Since 1997, the couple has owned the lot, which featured a 780-square-foot circa 1950s bungalow. Then based in Los Angeles, they used the humble “needs work” bungalow as a beach house and summer rental. “We always knew we wanted to build in Del Mar because it’s on the coast. But building takes stamina,” says Myck-Wayne, “and funds.” When their two sons left the nest, they decided there’s no time like the present and began looking for architects.

A move toward contemporary

“Conventional beach cottage” was the original plan. However, Fisher noticed that Myck-Wayne kept sending her “contemporary and really cool” images, which eventually led them to a less traditional concept. The single-story home features vaulted ceilings, clerestory windows and an offset sloped roof. “Even though the house is contemporary, it’s anchored in traditional Southern California vernacular,” Fisher says.

Informing the design were challenging space limitations along with San Diego’s year-round gorgeous weather, which inspired a strong indoor-outdoor connection. The area is deemed a 100-year floodplain, so the home, limited to 2,000 square feet and 27 feet of height, is almost 7 feet above the ground. “Because we had to have the livable area at the base flood elevation, we kind of fit the home in that 27 feet,” Fisher says.

The design challenges similarly influenced the color. “Since the house is small and you see almost all the colors at the same time, the whole palette needed to work together,” Fisher says. “[It was about] making sure that both cool and warm colors coordinate, and then finding the right neutral to back it up.”

A warm putty tone that’s not overly dark or abundantly yellow or magenta, Popular Gray SW 6071 (242-C1) flows through the house as a base neutral. Accent walls pop with brights like the boldly rich coral Reynard SW 6348 (125-C5) on doorframes and the wall of the stairwell connecting to the garage. Beachy blues include Raindrop SW 6485 (171-C2) in the mezzanine and guest room and Lagoon SW 6480 (170-C5) in the great room. The teal in both pull into pendant lights in the kitchen, tiling and a refurbished dresser-turned-vanity in the guest bathroom, and bedspread in the master bedroom, where an eggplant shade, also used in the master bath, is a Sherwin-Williams custom match.

Color connects the indoors and out

In all of her residential projects, Fisher likes each room to have its own relationship to the outdoors. “So this sequence of spaces and their relationship, it’s kind of like each space has its own little story, its own little color scheme. And you can probably trace it back to each individual pebble.”

While Myck-Wayne knew overall the colors she wanted in each room, she and Fisher together chose the accents based on “what we wanted to see from where,” according to the architect. “When there’s an exceptionally blue sky outside and you’re in the great room, you look up through the clerestory windows and you see the sky and it’s almost the same color blue that’s in the guest room,” Fisher says. “There’s a lot of fun plays on color, so even when you’re inside you still get that connection to the exterior.”

Thanks to smart design, light streams through the house and bounces off the colors, connecting Myck-Wayne to the ocean, the cliffs and those inspiring pebbles, which continue to wash new color ashore just down the street. “It’s a really daunting process, building a house from the ground up. The amount of choices you have to make is amazing,” Myck-Wayne says. “Starting with a handful of pebbles that I found appealing helped narrow some of those choices. I just knew that it was one way to feel good about the colors and achieve a coastal look without the kitsch. You know: without a million starfish and a lobster trap.”

Walls

Ceilings

Bathroom

Accent Colors