design home

pottery barn where i livemaryanne brillhart my name's maryanne brillhart,i'm here in montecito, california, in my home that i built and designed. we designed the whole entry to just kind of smile when you drive up to the house,

design home, i actually purchased the property about fifteen years before i completed the home, and i had a dream one night that i'd bought the lot and i totally pictured my house on the lot, and i woke up, drew the sketch and the home was built fifteen years later.

it's all about light with this house. in the living room, we have the dining room and living room together with one massive santa barbara stone fireplace, it's great for cocktail parties, where people are just all over the place, but still in one room, i like the color and feel of pine furniture so most of these are old pine antiques, the old pine dining table is probably from the eighteen hundreds i find it's really difficult to fit in just the right lamps for the right places so what i found is you can just locate pieces and make them into lamps. there's some glass jars that i love, really old glass,

there's two teapots in the house, old silver teapots that i made into lamps, and also in the living room there's some big old pots that were pottery-type pots that i had two lamps made for. so probably most of my lamps throughout the house have been made from pieces and i just find the lampshades or have them made as well. i wanted a home that was so santa barbara montecito style, we have this perfect weather year-round, seventy degrees, so you want to open everything up,we just feel very casual here, and i want it to feel comfortable when anybody's here, ever, and not worry about a thing.

we made the kitchen family room one big room as well, it's another big space. i decided to paint my floors rather than to continue the oak floors in there, so we painted it a sage, kind of porch green. i like white with the stainless steel, and so we brought a lot of the good high-end stainless steel appliances into the house. actually, everybody says "wow," when they walk into my kitchen, and i don't think it's because it's an outrageously great kitchen, it's so light, people love to collect in the kitchen when you're cooking,

everybody's hanging out, having their drinks, people feel relaxed when they come to our home, everyone can just wear their jeans and come over, and relax. the sun room's a lot different from a lot of the other rooms in the house, in that it's all glass, it's uh, very light, and bright, all french doors, all the way around, probably my favorite room in the house is our library, it's all dark, very different from the rest of the house, dark green carpet, dark walls, only two chairs, and we have a fireplace and that's our reading room.

the master bedroom, well again i used my favorites, which is linen and white, and i could just live forever with that. it's very calm, i used textures that are calming for me. when pottery barn came to shoot at my house, i just find that they have so much to bring into the home, and transform my home into something else. i love pottery barn. i have quite a few of their items, because i use them mainly to accessorize my home, they kind of add a new look, and it just makes my house smile a bit.

please visit www.potterybarn.com for more ideas and inspiration.

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