This California Designer's Happiness-Infused Home Delivers Design Therapy

It’s a well-worn adage of design that the spaces we live in can affect how we live in them. And it’s true. The colors we choose, the patterns we include, even the presence, type and number of plants we keep can all have an impact on how we feel in a space. But when it comes to navigating exactly how your rooms can serve to brighten your mood or lower your temperature, Anita Yokota might be a better resource than most. The author of the new book, Home Therapy, the Irvine, California-based designer and mom of three is also a licensed therapist who knows all about designing for peace of mind, because she’s already done it in her own home.

For quite some time, fans of Anita’s blogs have recognized the designer’s dining room as “the most difficult room,” in her home. “My combo living/dining room space can get the best of my design patience,” she confesses. But out of her frustrations, a series of creative and beautiful solutions have evolved. Her most recent efforts saw her and her husband building an L-shaped, window-adjacent banquette from scratch. After an extensive project that saw the couple both adjusting on the fly and demonstrating remarkable foresight — “one of the smartest decisions we made was to paint all the pieces before assembling,” she remembers — the room had a whole new feel. “After ten years of struggling with this room, I’m loving retreating to the table with a snack when the kitchen feels too full, or I want a little one-on-one time with my youngest.”

The child of an architect and a real estate broker, Anita grew up understanding the value of a well-crafted space. And her family room displays the full benefit of that sensitivity. Wanting to evoke feelings of family togetherness, Anita’s first focus was finding a sofa that would be stylish and functional. “Some designers suggest a range of 20-24 inches,” she says, “but I find 20 inches [feels] more like an office waiting area type of sofa. For homes, I like to go between 24-27 inches deep.” Adding patterns for the right balance between energizing and distracting was another major step. She picked patterned throw pillows to counter the solid gray tone of the sofa, tiles in a pattern inspired by California missions and the combination of a light-colored, patterned rug over a natural jute companion piece to create an environment that keeps the eye moving without becoming overwhelmed. “The key lesson here is playing with the scale of patterns,” she explains.

Designing is often re-designing, and for many designers, changing one piece of a room can spark an entire transformation. That was the case for the most recent makeover of Anita’s family room, which was triggered by the decision to update the fireplace. “We needed to reinvent this fireplace to become a bright and inviting hearth, the true heart of our family home,” the designer says of the massive DIY tiling project. Though it took a good amount of effort — from tiling to styling — in the end it was worth it, bringing, Anita says, a "much needed symmetry that I had unsuccessfully tried to achieve over the years with chairs, mirrors and more.”

Without question, one of the most important spaces in the home for a therapist turned full-time designer, blogger and DIY creator is the home office. In this home, that position is taken by an upstairs loft. Though the space itself is not massive, Anita makes the most of it. She has focused on comfortable seating to enhance her productivity and vertical storage to maximize the visual impact of the space while more effectively controlling clutter. One of her most innovative solutions to counter the natural darkness of a room without windows was to install a sun tunnel skylight, channeling sunlight from outside directly into the room. With the room designed for her work-from-home needs, the only obstacle left is figuring out how to keep the space to herself. “After updating our WFH space, everyone in the family has gotten a lot more use out of it,” she laughs.

The kitchen remodel was one of the biggest projects in designing this home, and one of the last. “I waited 12 years for this kitchen,” Anita says. But when the opportunity came, she made the most of it. Though the kitchen island was at the top of her wish list when they found the home, it was also one of the first things to go. In its place Anita added a built-in peninsula that extended both the cabinet and shelf space while doubling as a bar. Then, to keep things looking fresh, she accented the peninsula with pendant lighting with a rounder shape. “There are so many rectangular lines in the kitchen, from the subway tile to the modular cabinets,” she reflects, “I knew I wanted a softer shape to balance them.”

Other structural changes to the kitchen included removing cabinetry and a floating microwave to make room for a custom vent hood and a beautifully daring pink tiled backsplash. But the most life-changing additions, Anita confesses, are the appliances. Smart features built into pieces like her convection oven have opened up new interests in cooking for her daughter, Emily. “She downloaded the app immediately,” she says. “If she heads up to her room or leaves to see a friend after popping something in the oven, she can keep tabs on her cookies and turn off the oven from her phone.”

“When I first began dreaming of our kitchen renovation, I talked about empowering the kids to make their own meals,” Anita recalls. “Half the battle is in organization, and now that we have those systems in place, everything is moving so much more smoothly!” But it isn’t just the logistical ease of her new kitchen that the designer loves — it’s the look. “The Café appliances look so sleek with their brushed copper accents,” she exclaims, “My kitchen feels modern, but not sterile.”

As a therapist and designer, Anita understands from both perspectives how important it is that even the functional areas of the home be a joy to experience. A few years into her transition between the two professions, Anita is seeing how interconnected they are, in both the effect the finished spaces have on us, and in the time and effort that finishing them takes. “Connecting inside our homes is so important,” she says, but “renovations can cause long-term stress, with some projects lasting up to 9-12 months.” Her solution: take time to check in with yourself, and anyone else in the home who is going through the stress with you. And when it’s too much, take time away from a project to rediscover why you wanted to do it in the first place. “Give yourself some grace,” Anita advises, “you earned it.”

The designer’s home is a perpetual canvas for making and remaking a home. For Anita, one of the favorite sites of this continual process is the bedroom. Over the years, the room has seen its share of iterations and transformations, from the addition of bold and colorful (yet removable) wallpaper to multiple versions of the room’s seating nook.

In Anita’s bedrooms, the walls have always taken center stage. In this version of the space, the wallpaper and the white-painted walls that followed have given way to a paneled wall in an eye-catching Halcyon green from Sherwin Williams. “This shade is an almost sage green,” Anita explains, “and echoes the succulents and other greenery here in Southern California.” Paneled and painted in conversation with a similar half-wall on the other side of the room, the feature wall stands out as one of the designer’s favorites. “I’m convinced that wall paneling should be on everyone’s to-do list at home,” she smiles.