Monterey Colonial

Monterey Colonial is a completed residential renovation in Santa Monica, California, by Studio Murnane. The five-bedroom house measures about 9,500 square feet and is organized around a clear principle: art is the statement. Family life and museum-quality curation share the same plan rather than competing for attention in the rooms.

Renovated down to the studs, the project rebuilds the interior as a calm field for living and collecting. Gallery-white Roman clay walls, restrained furnishings, and nearly 1,800 square feet of hand-selected natural stone establish a quiet material register. Modern lighting and sunlit atriums open the house to daylight, while rooms stay functionally tuned for growing children as well as fine art. Details such as custom bunk beds and a stone steam bath show how residential architecture here absorbs daily routines without crowding the visual field.

Spatial organization favors clarity over decoration. Circulation, light, and surface finish do the compositional work so that artworks and family activity can occupy the rooms without visual noise. As Santa Monica residential architecture and interior design, Monterey Colonial reads as a contemporary house where proportion, material purity, and daylight structure the experience. Photography credited to Jess Isaac and Studio Murnane.