Cozy Up With Adorable Pastels at Samantha Klein's Pretty-in-Pink Los Angeles Home

Los Angeles digital creator Samantha Klein is truly at home when she’s working, and that’s not just a figure of speech: she dreams up advertising for interior-design brands. “I think [they] come to me for a very specific look since I have started using my house as part of my job,” she says. (Who wouldn’t want to work with the gal who channeled Slim Aarons and perched a silver Christmas tree in her one-of-a-kind pink pool?) “It’s helped me just to unleash my creativity and feel like a true creative person and artist, and I take a lot of pride in my house and what I get to do.” Though she’s called this space home since 2016, her commitment to comfort through self-expression has truly blossomed since the pandemic began — and she wants to show everyone how it’s done. Ready for an inspirational tour of her personal paradise? Come on in.

Built in 1928, the home Samantha shares with her husband, Aaron, and their two dogs, Mochi and Teddy, is full of architectural character. “This room is really why we wanted this house as soon as we saw it,” she says. “The exposed beam, the gorgeous light, the built-ins …”

And then she filled those gorgeous spaces with pink — yes, pink. “I know pink can get a real bad rap as being a bit much and it’s extreme for some people, but I think that’s ignoring the power of pink as being such a calming color,” she says. “Some people on the internet like to ask how it’s possible that my husband lives here because there’s so much pink in the house, but I think they’re ignoring the fact that the pink is a giant 10-foot-long couch that’s really comfortable!”

Samantha quite literally filled the alcoves on either side of the door to her patio with pink, accenting their arches with lozenge-shaped mirrors. This isn’t just any old tone, but a dimensional duo: “The nooks in the living room are painted with Sherwin-Williams’s Resounding Rose and contrasting in the arch with Pinky Beige,” she explains.

“I have become a bit of a pillow hoarder,” Samantha concedes. “Although I do [have a] 'one-in, one-out' policy whenever I get new ones. That’s [a] great bit of advice for anyone looking for ways to reinvent their house: Move things around, see how you like this or that. It’s fun to change things up.” She’s also a fan of swapping in throw blankets to accent the sectional: “The dogs love laying on them and they keep the couch clean and make the space feel a bit more customizable!”

Samantha’s array of antiques includes both fortuitous finds and heirlooms she’s inherited from family. “[We] have this perfect wall space to fit this wall [unit] that I’ve had for quite some time that used to belong to my grandparents,” she says. The Mickey Mouse perched beside the flower mirror, in turn, is a wind-up toy she played with when she visited them as a child. The painted taper candles on the right side of the central cabinet are a friend’s handiwork, and the multicolored "LOVE" figurine on the left side of the shelf above it topped Samantha and Aaron’s wedding cake.

Behind the sectional, a curvaceous burlwood bookcase displays both a petal-pink botanical table lamp and one of Samantha’s ever-changing fresh arrangements. “I feel therapeutic comfort in getting five bunches of flowers and just making bouquets,” she says. “And the thing with flowers is [that] they’re already beautiful as they are, so you don’t have to really judge your work when you’re making a bouquet.” From the grocery store to the Los Angeles Flower Market, she leaves no source of stems unpicked.

“This room we decided to make a permanent dining room, and I am so happy — I love it so much,” Samantha sighs. (It’s no accident that she says this about all her spaces; she’s worked hard for that joy!) “For the most part, we eat meals at our table instead of the couch, which was the goal. Recurring seating, storage and seashell silhouettes carry through her rooms and reinforce the spaces’ cohesive character; keep an eye out for these themes, as you’ll see them again and again.

“I get inspiration everywhere; I go to tons of flea markets, I go to tons of antique malls [and] estate sales,” Samantha says. She stays on top of what’s going on in her area via EstateSales.net, a move that harks back to the jumping-off point of her professional life: After graduating with a degree in fashion merchandising, she created an app for vintage shopping.

The brunette in a bathing suit on Samantha’s blue shelving unit is a family heirloom in two senses. “This is actually a portrait of my grandma that my grandpa made,” she says. “I remember actually seeing it on that shelf that’s in our living room when I was a kid. I’m just so happy that she’s here now!”

“I had this wallpaper made based on a vintage wallpaper that I saw online that I obviously couldn’t buy anywhere,” Samantha explains. The kitchen cabinets are painted in Clare’s Baby Soft, a classic pink that complements the warm tones in that vintage-that’s-new-again paper perfectly.

Pops of that pretty paper carry throughout the kitchen. “We didn’t want it to overwhelm the space, so we only used little bits and pieces here and there,” Samantha says. To the left of the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, a color-blocked tile backsplash presents the pattern’s pastels as graphic stripes.

Hidden storage has its virtues, but who would want to tuck away beauties like these? “I have a bit of an obsession with collecting vintage cups and mugs and glasses,” Samantha says, “and I just love having them on display — [they’re] something that just makes me happy when I come in here in the morning to make whatever I feel like making. I know some people go off and on about the pros and cons of having open shelving, but [it] inspires me.”

Samantha let herself run wild with her old-but-new wallpaper in one particular room. “In the breakfast nook we kind of overdid it — in a fun way! In a purposeful way! I just love that space. [It’s] so kitsch, so lovely, and just so novelty and fun.” Wallpaper is also a budget-friendly way to transform a space you’re not interested in rebuilding from the ground up. “You can do a renovation on kind of a smaller scale and still make a huge impact.”

Sure, Samantha could have sourced a premade headboard for the bedroom, but where’s the fun in that? Upholstered and embedded with fairy lights, this custom piece by Samantha’s friend Cynthia Moreno creates a one-of-a-kind grotto. “I love having novelty, fun headboards — it feels like we’re sleeping in a giant clamshell! It’s just so dreamy, and so vintage and cozy,” she sighs. The graphic wallpaper she chose to create an accent wall both echoes the bed’s silhouette and palette and gently emphasizes the room’s curved ceiling. Checked lilac-and-white Dusen Dusen bedding, in turn, folds in a more angular pattern for just a smidge of visual contrast.

Samantha perched an iridescent, Murano-inspired glass table lamp on her vintage nightstand, then doubled its luminous effect with a playful, rainbow-framed vanity mirror. An antique caddy’s trio of seashells corrals curios and extends the bedroom’s aquatic-effervescence theme — clever, no?

This low dresser was not quite ready for prime time — but decidedly ready for primer — when Samantha encountered it. “[It] was chipped and the colors were not really my vibe, so I sanded and repainted the whole thing,” she says. “I loooove how it turned out!”

Looking to get creative with spare supplies? Consider what Samantha calls her “bonus-room-slash-multifaceted-everything-room,” where a playful, abstract array behind the sofa bed brings together hues from other parts of her home. “I happened to have leftover paint from other projects, so my friend Kristina came and did a mural here."

That mural has a very practical purpose: “It helps with keeping a lot of uniformity in the house when you’re just using the same one or two or three buckets of paint on all sorts of different projects,” Samantha explains. “Even right now, I’m just noticing that the pillows kind of match as well, which was not intentional. I love it! It brings originality to the room and just helps bring a fun energy to the space.” Covet those cushions? “I get a lot from Urban Outfitters, as well as Kip&Co, Sunday Citizen, Moi Mili and Rose Greenberg,” she says.

Surrounding yourself with retro treasures is much more than stumbling into the perfect pieces. It also means keeping your eyes peeled (and setting online search terms) for favorite motifs and models, and knowing what will work with your budget when you find it. “This is one of my recent vintage finds,” Samantha explains. “It is a shell phone! I’ve been wanting one for so long, and I finally found the right one at the right price and I am so happy.”

The second half of the bonus room is office space — that doubles as a functional celebration of Samantha’s wardrobe via a rotating closet. “It took me so long to color-code it,” she says. “I absolutely love it. How could you not? It’s another area of my life where having something fun and exciting has helped me to be more organized. It’s something [that I] can’t picture myself ever parting with. It’s surprisingly easy to set up, too! It makes me just feel like I’m living in a dream world.”

Samantha's motorized Closet Carousel — which plugs into a wall outlet and operates via a two-directional foot switch — was a hand-me-down from a friend, but the company that’s produced them since the ‘80s is still going strong, if you’d like to make your dreams of a Clueless-style closet a reality. They can be installed with simple tools, DIYers!

The pink Panton chair at the desk in the bonus room recalls the blue versions in Samantha’s dining room. Her floor mirror and the tchotchkes along the window’s wide sill, in turn, recall generations of pop culture and childhood delights. “I have things from so many different decades,” she says. “I have new things, I have old things … I don’t like having rules and I don’t like putting myself in a box!”

Mind you, the pastel magnificence of Samantha’s interior space is but petals strewn on the path en route to her home’s true focal point. Her showstopping checkered pool is “definitely the newest change in the house; that means it’s my favorite right now until we do something else,” she says. “I love how unique it is. It feels different than any other pool I’ve been to! It’s the most gorgeous coral and pink; we always dreamed of having a pool but never thought we would actually have one. Quite a project, but it has gone beyond my wildest dreams!”

Indoor-outdoor upholstery has come a long way, baby, and Samantha and Aaron put their feet up beside the pool in style. This seating spot is designed to withstand Southern California’s occasional less-than-sunny weather, but it migrates just a bit over the course of the year: “We cover it or bring it into the poolhouse in the winter months,” she says.

“We dreamt of having a pool for years, but seriously started discussing it in 2020 and started work in late 2021 and finished in 2022,” Samantha explains. The idyllic arch beside the pool leads into what was once the garage, believe it or not. “We already were using the garage as an office space for Aaron, but we wanted to tie it together with the pool space. Toward the end of the pool build I saw a picture of an arched outdoor space and immediately knew that's what I wanted.”

Sure enough, the conversion made the backyard even dreamier: “We love how the open space really transforms and makes the backyard look so much bigger.”

Mochi the corgi isn’t the only member of the family who delights in how Samantha has made the most of SoCal’s temperate climate with the pool house’s curtained "doors." “I know a lot of people are confused when they see that it’s completely open here, but it just works because of the weather that we’re lucky to have,” she says. The breeziness doesn’t end there: “Also we have a hot tub in our pool, so we use the [outdoor] space year-round! I think it’s just a perfect indoor-outdoor kind of space.”

This was just a basic garage before, and we really wanted to create [a] fun office space for [Aaron], and also a dual poolhouse,” Samantha says. “My friend who did the mural in the bonus room also painted these lines on the wall in here, which I absolutely love — again, I think it just brings everything together.”

Samantha made a large-scale commitment to her love of warm checkerboard patterns with a four-door, pink-on-pink Samsung Bespoke refrigerator in the poolhouse. “You can pick from their color and material options,” she explains.

Another portion of the indoor-outdoor sectional holds court in the poolhouse beside a tiled pink side table and decor that recalls vignettes throughout the house and yard. Rearranging seating and storage for entertaining couldn’t be easier when everything plays so well together.

Samantha’s spectacular yard makes a compelling case for making holiday-home mainstays part of your day-to-day life. When it comes to outdoor showers, for instance, why should beach bungalows have all the fun? “I use [mine] all the time,” she says. “You instantly feel like you’re on vacation. The whole outdoor space is so serene to me and I love it so much!”