A stately but somewhat depressing home in Los Angeles is the home of famed American director Brian Robbins, remodelled by American interior designers Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent. "These people have shown a lot of creativity in the entertainment and fashion world over the years," said the designer. They asked us to make the house less heavy and ornate, more suitable for a modern family, a friendly and warm feeling."

In the early decades of the 20th century, before the advent of the California modernist movement, Los Angeles’s vaunted indoor-outdoor lifestyle had not yet become the defining characteristic of the L.A. residential landscape. Most houses still clung to an earlier model of domestic architecture, one that posited residential space as a fortress against the incursion of nature.

The designers’ first order of business involved the consolidation of smaller discrete rooms to fashion more generous, airy spaces for the kitchen and breakfast rooms as well as the master bedroom suite. They also opened up the entry foyer and mezzanine gallery and installed new doors and windows of iron and glass throughout the home to usher in more natural light. The living room, outfitted with a mix of pedigreed, centuries-spanning furniture and accessories, perhaps best exemplifies the light and bright spirit of the designers’ intervention. This room was particularly dark, and now it’s one of the brightest spaces in the house.