A new room around an old stairwell - living room renovation

Sunset, August, 1995 by Daniel Gregory

Setting priorities helped a Los Angeles designer expand and brighten his living room

LOS ANGELES furniture and interior designer Nick Berman approached the remodeling of his own 1970s house just as he would a client's: he concentrated on changes that would provide maximum effect for relatively little cost.

A view-blocking, non-structural interior arcade presented the biggest problem because it dominated the house's public spaces. Resembling temporary stage props from a high school production of The Comedy of Errors, the low plaster arches lined two sides of the living room, dividing it from the dining area and making both spaces appear smaller than they actually were. The ersatz Mediterranean look seemed at odds with the generally contemporary character of the house, so Berman removed the arcade and combined the two rooms into an airy, unified space.

Another drawback was the chocolate brown tile floor, which dominated both rooms with its dark color but would have been too expensive to replace. Berman decided to add features that would compensate for the floor's somber hue. To draw the eye away from the floor, he capitalized on such underutilized assets as the almost 11-foot ceiling and the existing stairwell at the center of the space.

Before the remodel, the arches almost seemed to collide with the stairwell. Now, according to Berman, the stairwell functions "like the hub of a wheel - the room revolves around it. I wanted to simplify it and treat it as pure sculpture, pulling you down to the floor below." The stairway partition creates just enough visual separation between living and dining areas without enclosing either space.

Berman chose pale yellow stucco as a way to bring an outdoor feeling indoors: the house's original exterior walls are pale yellow stucco. To allow the yellow tone to dominate, the balanced color palette for the other interior surfaces is muted: warm white is used throughout the house except for a cool, pale sky blue for the living area ceiling and a warm, pale pink for the dining room wall. To take better advantage of an ocean view - which the orientation of the house seemed to disregard - Berman repositioned all of the living room furniture along a diagonal. The combination of features, finishes, and furniture arrangement, says Berman, is designed to make you "move your eye throughout the space in a simple, calm, and pleasing way." And that is just what it does.

Much of the furniture is of his own design. His firm, Berman/Rosetti Furniture, is represented by the Mimi London showroom at Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles.