Designing a Luxury Home in Santa Monica: What to Consider Before You Begin

If you're planning a new build or significant renovation in Santa Monica, one of the earliest questions should be who needs to be at the table before the plans are finalized.

Your architect and builder are obvious answers. Your interior designer should be one, too.

There is a misconception that interior design begins once construction is nearing completion — when it's time to choose furniture, rugs, and art. In a comprehensive residential project, many of the decisions that ultimately determine how the interior looks and functions happen much earlier.

Lighting locations. Millwork. Flooring transitions. Stone. Hardware. Electrical. Furniture layouts. Window treatments. Sight lines. The relationship between interior and exterior spaces.

By the time the walls are closed, many of those decisions have already been made.

For clients building or renovating homes in Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, and across the Westside of Los Angeles, I recommend bringing your interior designer into the project early. Here's why.

When Should You Hire an Interior Designer for a New Build?

Ideally, an interior designer joins the project while there is still an opportunity to thoughtfully review and influence the plans.

That can mean working alongside the architect during design development or joining once architectural plans are underway but well before interior selections and construction decisions have been finalized.

The important part isn't a particular month on the project calendar.

It's having the designer involved before decisions that affect the interiors become expensive or difficult to change.

A furniture plan, for example, may reveal that an outlet needs to move, a wall needs additional space, or a doorway would function better somewhere else.

A lighting plan should consider where furniture and art will eventually live.

A custom vanity needs to account for the stone, plumbing fixtures, sconces, mirrors, storage needs, and electrical.

These decisions are connected. Treating them as separate layers can create compromises later.

Your Furniture Plan Should Influence the Architecture

Furniture may feel like one of the last decisions in a new build.

In reality, thinking about furniture early can tell us a great deal about whether a room is going to work.

Take a large living room with an ocean view.

Before determining electrical locations or finalizing certain architectural details, I want to understand how people will actually occupy that room. Where will the primary seating group sit? How many people should it accommodate? Is there a secondary conversation area? Where does your eye go when you enter? What should remain unobstructed?

In larger homes, scale becomes particularly important.

A room can be architecturally beautiful and still feel awkward once it's furnished if its proportions weren't considered in relation to how the space will actually be used.

Planning the interior alongside the architecture gives both a chance to work together.

Lighting Decisions Happen Earlier Than You Think

Lighting has an enormous effect on how a finished home feels, but many lighting decisions happen during construction.

Recessed lighting, junction boxes, sconces, decorative fixtures, switches, floor outlets, cabinetry lighting, and art lighting all require forethought.

If we already know that a particular wall is intended for a significant piece of art, we can plan accordingly.

If a dining table is going to be custom-sized or positioned differently than the architectural plan assumes, we need to know that before the decorative fixture is centered.

If a room will have floating furniture, floor outlets can eliminate cords running across an otherwise beautifully finished floor.

None of these details is particularly dramatic by itself.

Together, they're part of what makes a finished home feel resolved.

Custom Millwork Requires a Bigger Conversation

Custom cabinetry and millwork are another reason I prefer being involved early.

Beautiful millwork isn't simply a matter of choosing a cabinet style.

We need to think about proportion, materials, hardware, lighting, storage, furnishings, and how the cabinetry relates to the rest of the architecture.

In a kitchen, there are appliances and the way the family cooks and entertains to consider.

In a dressing room, it's the client's actual wardrobe.

In a library or living room, it might be books, art, objects, a television, or a collection that needs to be accommodated intentionally.

The best custom work doesn't look as though it was added to a room.

It looks as though the house was always meant to have it.

Material Selections Shouldn't Happen in Isolation

A beautiful slab of stone can be wrong for a particular house.

So can an expensive floor, tile, plumbing fixture, or hardware finish.

I prefer to develop a material language for the home as a whole.

That doesn't mean using the same materials in every room. It means considering how one space relates to the next and creating enough continuity that the house feels cohesive.

This is especially important in a substantial renovation or ground-up home where hundreds of individual selections are being made.

When decisions are made one at a time, it's easy to end up with a collection of beautiful materials that don't quite belong together.

When they're made within an established design direction, each selection has context.

Early Design Gives You More Opportunity for Customization

One of the pleasures of designing a home from the ground up is not having to force a solution simply because it's the closest available option.

A piece can be fabricated to fit a specific wall.

A niche can be designed around a sculpture.

A rug can be made to the exact dimensions of a room.

Stone can be selected by slab.

Furniture can be designed around the proportions of the architecture.

Millwork can accommodate the things you actually own.

Details can repeat subtly from one part of the house to another.

This is where a home begins to feel genuinely personal.

For me, custom design isn't about adding something elaborate everywhere. It's having the freedom to make the right decision for the space instead of choosing the closest approximation.

Your Interior Designer, Architect, and Builder Should Be Collaborating

On a large residential project, no one works in a vacuum.

The architect is thinking about the building.

The contractor is thinking about how it gets built.

Trades and fabricators bring their own expertise.

The interior designer is thinking deeply about how the interior architecture, materials, furnishings, lighting, and details ultimately come together around the people who will live there.

The best projects benefit from those perspectives overlapping.

Questions can be resolved before they become field problems. Drawings can be reviewed through more than one lens. Design decisions can account for both the construction happening now and the furnishings coming later.

For the client, this also creates a more cohesive process.

Instead of trying to personally connect every decision being made by multiple professionals, you have a team working toward the same finished home.

A Full-Service Interior Designer Does More Than Select Finishes

There is a tremendous amount of work between approving a design concept and walking into the finished home.

Furniture has to be specified and ordered. Custom pieces need drawings and approvals. Fabrics and finishes need to be confirmed. Lead times need to be tracked. Vendors need answers. Damaged items need to be addressed. Deliveries need coordination. Installers and workrooms need schedules.

Meanwhile, construction continues.

There are site meetings, revisions, samples, substitutions, shop drawings, and decisions that can't always wait until next week.

Full-service interior design is as much about maintaining the integrity of the overall vision as it is about creating that vision in the first place.

For many of my clients, having someone manage that complexity is just as important as the design itself.

What If Construction Has Already Started?

It's not necessarily too late.

An interior designer can join a project already underway, but what's possible will depend on how far construction has progressed.

If framing has begun but walls are still open, there may still be significant flexibility.

If finishes have already been ordered and electrical work is complete, we're working within more established parameters.

And if construction is nearly finished, the focus may shift primarily toward furnishings, window treatments, art, and finishing the interiors.

The earlier we begin, the more opportunities we have to consider the home as a whole.

Designing a Home That Feels Considered From the Beginning

A new build gives you an unusual opportunity.

Instead of adapting your life to a home that already exists, you can make thousands of small decisions that shape a home specifically around the way you want to live.

The details don't all need to call attention to themselves.

In fact, I prefer when they don't.

A perfectly placed sconce, the proportion of a custom cabinet, the relationship between a sofa and a window, the transition from one material to another — these are the things you may never point out to a guest.

You simply experience them.

That's the value of considering the interiors from the beginning.

The architecture, materials, lighting, furniture, art, and details aren't separate projects completed one after another.

They're one home.

Interiors by CK is a Santa Monica-based full-service interior design studio serving clients in Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Malibu, and throughout the Westside of Los Angeles. For new construction, major renovations, and comprehensive residential interiors, CK works alongside clients and their project teams from the early design stages through furnishings and final installation.