Shop Designer Jenna Pilant’s Rainbow-Disco Home + Learn to Flip Furniture Like a Pro
Inspired to create your own quirky paradise? These products and practices can take any space (or sad-sack piece) from “blah to ta-da,” as Jenna would say.
Sean Rosenthal
While there’s no official evidence that Jenna Pilant sprang into existence after lightning struck a lava lamp in the middle of a Nebraska cornfield, there’s no proof that she didn’t, either — and given how the farmgirl-turned-polychromatic-designer electrifies furniture and spaces, all that sizzle needs an origin story, right?
If you’re ready to join her in the battle against beige, this arsenal of eye-catching pieces from Jenna’s place will give you the tools you need to get started. Want to get even weirder? Read on for a closer look at some of her most dazzling before-and-after furniture flips, then arm yourself with that swagger for your next visit to a thrift shop or flea market.
Jenna Pilant's San Diego Home Is a Disco at the End of the Rainbow 31 Photos
With a sunken living room, hand-applied mirrored tiles and more colors on the front door than most people use in their entire homes, this eclectic and ultra-personalized renovation is a joyful reminder to tune out trends and live with what you love.
The Dining Room
Dragging this space out of neutral, traditional doldrums meant giving the built-in a coat of bold paint and a hand-applied disco-ball backsplash, creating a feature wall with a vertically striped mural plus personalized neon, then bringing in key midcentury pieces to make the dining room feel eclectic rather than like time capsule. Jenna’s MVPs? A Herman Miller conference table repurposed for dining, a colorful array of molded plastic Eames chairs and, to dangle from the existing chandelier, glass monkeys (those funky monkeys). Echoing the classic game pieces, these cheeky chimps can be tough to find on the resale market, but if you’re lucky enough to score some, they’re worth their weight in fun.
![“The only pop of color with this built-in [when] we moved in was the countertops, so I actually played off the color and painted the wood to be a complementary hue,” designer Jenna Pilant explains. To the alcove’s left, she offset that deep tone with a bright abstract canvas by Atlanta artist (and HGTV Handmade home-tour alum) Cassie Birchette; on the floor, she echoed her new dining table’s lozenge shape and defined the room with a toasty orange area rug. Molded plastic Eames chairs round out the “Technicolor dining room.”](http://hgtvhome.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/hgtv/fullset/2024/1/12/Original_SeanRosenthal_HGTVHandmadeHomeTour_SanDiego_JennaPilant_-0071.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.616.411.85.suffix/1705081907622.webp)
Sean Rosenthal
Sean Rosenthal
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The Formal Living Room
The massive, neutral marble fireplace at the center of this space was not Jenna’s cup of tea, to put it mildly (or blandly, if you will); in lieu of sinking time and money into ripping it out, she invited LA artist Ruben Rojas to tag it up with his iconic "Love" script. She gave a pea-green circular sofa one of her signature glow-ups by reupholstering it with black velvet and Peter Max-inspired backing fabric, then sprinkled joyously colorful accessories around the room.
Sean Rosenthal
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The Family Room
This quirky, cozy space is all about large-scale color blocking, beginning with a spectacular orange version of Ligne Roset's iconic and ultra-versatile Togo sectional that frames a green area rug riffing on Virgil Abloh's WET GRASS. A sculptural red bookcase is right at home between the windows, and a playful array of retro games and curios arranged like spokes on the coffee table demonstrate that thoughtful styling can make anything look chic.
Sean Rosenthal
Sean Rosenthal
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The Bathroom
Remember that time using the bathroom made you feel like Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes — or Madonna riffing on her in the “Material Girl” video, or Ryan Gosling riffing on her at the Academy Awards? No? Jenna’s got you covered, and this Seletti mirror will change the way you primp. (There are both smaller and much larger versions, if you want to test-drive before making a big commitment ... or cover a whole wall.)
Sean Rosenthal
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The Bedroom
Inspired by The Saguaro Palm Springs and her own space’s dramatic ceiling, Jenna laid purple carpeting and created a custom-upholstered headboard that pulled tones from swirling abstract wallpaper she installed opposite the bed. (Pro tip: When you find a pattern you love, use it as a cheat sheet for the rest of your room.) Graphic pops of lettering and text layer the design even more.
Sean Rosenthal
Sean Rosenthal
Sean Rosenthal
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Upholstery 101: Recover a Chair
Now that you’ve got a sense of the cut of Jenna’s jib, get ready to follow along through the cut of her fabrics (and the paint of her dressers, and so on). Dip a toe in the world of furniture-flipping by turning a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it side chair like this one into a major design moment.
Sean Rosenthal
Take a melancholic, monochromatic side chair from "good-enough bonus seating if we have a big dinner party, I guess" to "was there a Missoni collab I missed?!" with Jenna's pro guidance to beginning upholstery.
Sean Rosenthal
This basic piece from a So Cal thrift store is perfect for beginners: Its foam appears to be intact, it comes apart with simple hardware, and its two upholstered surfaces have simple shapes that will make razoring away the old fabric a snap.
Sean Rosenthal
When working with circular shapes like the ones on this chair, Jenna recommends selectig either a solid fabric or a non-directional pattern. With this material, for example, the zigzags are so busy that variations in tautness won't be noticeable.
Create an Upcycled Mushroom Ottoman
We couldn’t include shopping info for the cute-as-pie, ‘70s-inspired mushroom ottoman between Jenna’s living wall and sunken seating area because she created it from semi-scratch with a clever combination of a 5-gallon plastic bucket, pre-cut wood rounds and tricks of the trade like webbing and Dacron fiber batting. This DIY project yields a sturdy piece that’ll go toe-to-toe with pro-produced pieces.
Sean Rosenthal
This statement accessory is an on-trend nod to disco-era novelty pieces that could also sprout up in midcentury, boho or even Scandinavian spaces. You heard it here first: Shrooms are the new neutrals.
Sean Rosenthal
This DIY begins with a plastic pail that will shed its metal handles (courtesy of heavy-duty tin snips) and gain support and smoothness from wooden rounds for its top and bottom surfaces.
Sean Rosenthal
The ottoman owes its smoothness to underlayers of jute webbing and Dacron and a four-piece fabric sleeve you can adjust for tightness as you pull it into place.
Transform a Basic, Thrifted Dresser
Fancy a bit of freestyling with paint and dimensional detailing rather than custom fabric? This showstopping dresser upcycling project is a budget-friendly and utterly spectacular way to create bespoke bedroom furniture that complements a feature wall like it was (re)born to do it.
Sean Rosenthal
An ultra-saturated shade of paint like this gregarious green can hold its own in front of a bold wall mural, and the shadows the dresser's custom, 3D detailing throws contribute to its groovy character.
Sean Rosenthal
Jenna got this blah MDF piece for pennies on the dollar from an office park that was getting rid of its furnishings. It's no accident that it looks like a blank canvas; she'll be changing everything about it but its dimensions.
Sean Rosenthal
A simple swap like these new brass handles lends the dresser a bit of vintage richness; the half-inch, half-round flexible molding (which Jenna nails in place to create an ultra-graphic design she'll eventually paint over) pumps up the dresser's midcentury style even more.
Turn a Tallboy Into a Statement Piece
This tallboy was no charmer when Jenna plucked it from thrift-store obscurity; its statement back then was "your flight won't be boarding for another two hours, so you might as well pay 20 bucks for a sandwich." Now, with wooden rounds that transform its silhouette and a cherry-red coat of paint it's a postmodern heartbreaker.
Sean Rosenthal
To make a piece like this one pop, Jenna never chooses flat paint (and usually goes for a semi-gloss). She also never messes with drips when her paint is wet; the key to a sleek final product is waiting until that excess dries and then removing it with a razor blade.
Sean Rosenthal
The key to piling on new features that won't look cobbled together once the piece is finished? Joining your components with fast-drying latex caulk that's designed to partner with paint (and being lightning-fast with baby wipes to catch excess as you go).
Sean Rosenthal
By alternating 10" wood rounds and 4" PVC couplers, Jenna took the table's original, bare-aluminum base from scrawny to spectacular.
