Chromatic Scale Residence || When the Art Collection Becomes the Blueprint
In a San Francisco home where bold colour and art are core design elements rather than afterthoughts, Studio VARA approached the Chromatic Scale Residence as a curator would a gallery, building each room around the work it was meant to hold.
The result is a multi-level family residence that moves through colour and culture with the confidence of a well-argued thesis, where every furnishing decision traces back to a single guiding question: what does this piece need around it to be fully itself?
The living room establishes the home's ambition early. A large-format dark marble fireplace surround anchors the space with quiet authority, while yellow-gold velvet sofas and a rug with a bright yellow inkblot design push warmth and energy into the foreground. A colourful figurative sculpture by Yinka Shonibare commands the room's edge, its intricate patterning in direct conversation with the richness of the surrounding textiles. The effect is visually stimulating without tipping into excess, a balance Studio VARA achieves by grounding exuberance in restraint.
Yellow-gold sofas and a Yinka Shonibare sculpture hold their ground against a dark marble fireplace surround that anchors the Living Room without demanding silence.
Mika Tajima's four-panel work ignites the wall above the credenza, its electric pinks and golds in full conversation with the cobalt sectional and tangerine ottomans below.
That restraint is most visible in the transition between the living room and dining room, where a large painting by Latifa Echakhch, executed in shimmering gold metallic pigment, was positioned opposite the windows to catch natural light throughout the day. The placement was deliberate: the work casts a golden glow across both spaces, functioning as a visual bridge rather than a focal point in isolation.
On the lower level, the library takes the home's colour logic in an entirely different direction. Walls and custom shelving enveloped in deep blue create a moody, immersive atmosphere, warmed by yellow lounge chairs and a tan leather-topped ottoman. Above the console, Dawoud Bey's darkly saturated photographic print "Night Coming Tenderly" deepens the room's drama, its nocturnal quality perfectly calibrated to a space designed for quieter hours.
Above the console, a darkly saturated print entitled, “Night Coming Tenderly” by Dawoud Bey deepens the room's drama and rich aesthetic of the library.
The family room, by contrast, is built for living. A large custom bookcase wall unit displays books and objects gathered from years of travel, and at its center, a turquoise artwork by Analia Saban offers a clear, sharp burst of colour against the neutral surround. Across the room, a four-panel work by Mika Tajima in electric pinks, reds, and golds pulls the eye and animates the wall behind a dark credenza with the energy of something still in motion.
Beyond the shelves, San Francisco Bay opens wide, a view that the turquoise Analia Saban work quietly anticipates from across the room.
Connecting every level of the home is the stair runner, the residence's most theatrical design gesture. Shifting through a full spectrum of colour as it moves from floor to floor, it functions as the spine of the house, a continuous thread that ties each distinct room into a single coherent narrative. Two additional works by Mika Tajima flank the stairwell, their gradient surfaces in dialogue with the runner's shifting palette.
The home’s pièce de résistance is a vibrant stair runner that serves as a spine, weaving through the house and connecting each level.
In the master \bedroom, deep purple wallcovering envelops the room in richness, offset by a burnt orange upholstered bed and layered lavender bedding. The combination is bold, but grounded, the kind of confident colour decision that only works when the whole house has already established its intentions.
What Studio VARA has created here is not a decorated home. It is a curated one, where art, colour, and architecture operate as a single, integrated system, and where the lived experience of moving through the space is itself the design.
Deep purple wallcovering and a burnt orange bed frame meet without apology in the Master Bedroom, proof that the home's colour confidence never wavers behind closed doors.
Project Details
Interior Design: Studio VARA
Design Team: Maura Fernández Abernethy, Jacqueline Lytle, Esha Sood, Zoe Hsu, Gail Avila, Jackie Fung, Mariela Fernández
Contractor: Thompson & Suskind General Contractors
Developer: Troon Pacific
Photography: Matthew Millman
