Jenna Pilant's San Diego Home Is a Disco at the End of the Rainbow

Seeing “before” photos of Jenna Pilant’s San Diego home — then a decidedly ‘70s SoCal shrine to all things earth-toned — paired with Jennafied versions of the same rooms is a bit like watching Dorothy step from Kansas into Oz. A polychromatic designer who walks the walk on #banthebeige, she’s all about putting a personal stamp on anonymous objects and so-so spaces.

Going all in on super-saturated color and prismatic patterns is one thing when you’re a professional furniture-flipper and room-rejuvenator, but how likely are the rest of us to echo Jenna’s swagger in our spaces? That’s where embracing your weird comes in, she says. “’Trend’ is my least favorite word, honestly. The thing for me in design that doesn’t go out of style is being you — like really [homing] in on what you like and what your color palette is.” Granting yourself that permission is the key that unlocks your happy place — and Jenna’s will show you how it’s done.

“I came home from the hospital being born to a yellow-walled, navy-[carpeted], rainbow-themed nursery, so I don’t know if I came out of the womb loving color, but I definitely got influenced by it right away,” Jenna explains. “My favorite color’s a rainbow.”

Jenna wastes no time establishing a mood at her home, and the first DIY visitors clap eyes on is a doozy. “Right when you walk into our space, the first thing you see is this giant checkered mural,” she says. “I wanted to give all guests who come here a nice little taste of what to expect throughout the home.”

“When we moved into this house it was beyond blah: 50 shades of beige,” Jenna recalls. That said, one of its original quirks proved useful in the large-scale upcycling project she undertook. “The couple that built this house originally grew plants in this atrium area, so there was this giant cement tub underneath — which is why I knew I could build a sunken living room.”

Jenna did away with the not-so-groovy subflooring and deepened the atrium to accommodate wraparound upholstered seating; the mild-mannered terra-cotta border, in turn, gave way to vivid blue penny tile. A coat of fiery orange paint for the decorative beams beneath the skylights dispelled the dentist’s-office vibes and made the space below it feel more like a VIP area.

Bringing this beauty into existence was a pandemic-era labor of love and what Jenna calls the “atomic atrium project.”

“[I] poured the concrete, installed the custom, super-graphic shag carpeting and even made these custom-upholstered cushions,” she says. The living wall of lush philodendrons makes use of another of the previous owners' kooky features: "I added the plants there because I have the original hose [they installed inside one of the atrium's pillars], so I knew I would have easy access to water," she explains.

Most of what Jenna confronted here at move-in wasn’t long for this world: The china hutch, dining set and sconces all had to go. The built-ins, hardwood and chandelier, now those had potential, and she had ideas.

“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,” Jenna 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 Herman Miller conference-table-turned-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.”

And that once-frumpy chandelier? Jenna whisked away its shades and bedecked it with a bit of jewel-toned, Barrel of Monkeys-inspired vintage glass to tweak its character.

An old-school fireplace surround can be a fabulous focal point … or a bummer, if you crave color the way Jenna does. “The main design hurdle for this space was working around this blah marble that I never in a million years would pick myself — but I also wasn’t going to go and replace it,” she recalls.

How, then, to go about making this stone feel precious? “I commissioned muralist [and] artist Ruben Rojas out of Los Angeles to come and graffiti it up with his iconic love signature,” she explains. “What I love about this mural is it adds a permanent, unexpected art feature within the space.” Like Jenna’s reupholstery projects, Ruben’s mural breathes new and vibrant life into a timeworn piece — and it sidesteps the hassle of renovation.

“This is a 1970s circular sofa (originally a less-than-transporting shade of pea green) that I thrifted up in Los Angeles and then reupholstered with black velvet on the inside,” Jenna explains. “On the outside I did this Peter Max-inspired reproduction print. The original sofa did not include fringe underneath, but I decided to add that for a little extra flair.”

As practical as they are playful, LEGO wildflowers Jenna arranged in a graphic vase are the building blocks of a next-level coffee table arrangement. Can your fresh-cut blooms come apart and reassemble as, say, portions of a spaceship? They cannot. (If you can prove us wrong, send pictures immediately.)

In this sunny seating area beside one of the picture windows, Jenna dialed back detail on her pair of swiveling barrel chairs and let their deep blue velvet upholstery boost the impact of a vivid and textural YaYa & Co. statement pillow. Giving the eye a bit of a breather via that neutral-ish seating let her splash out again on a Chinatown Market smiley-face area rug that echoes the chairs’ curves and the pillow’s exuberant color scheme.

“This is the family room, which is the space that propelled me from upholsterer to designer,” Jenna explains. “I had actually never tiled a day in my life, and I decided my first project out of the gate was going to be demoing this [stone fireplace] completely down and rebuilding it from scratch.”

Ultra-dimensional concrete hex tiles now rise from floor to ceiling, and bold blue floating shelves carry up from lower cabinets to a graceful meeting with the pitched ceiling. Jenna painted the natural wood molding so the windows would match the walls, then drew focus back to the center of the room with a text-art area rug and a tangerine-toned riff on Ligne Roset’s iconic Togo sectional.

Today in Demonstrations of Extremely Satisfying Geometry: Jenna’s occasional seating plays beautifully with the two-dimensional tile footer she installed at the base of the family-room fireplace. Take this visual inspiration and deploy it with gusto!

Designers know you can make just about anything part of a spectacular coffee-table arrangement if you position with purpose. Think of Jenna’s ultra-confident array of retro games and tchotchkes the next time you fall for a whimsical piece and can’t (yet) imagine where you’ll use it: If someone’s out there tablescaping around a Slinky Dog, the world is your oyster.

Public reactions to what Jenna calls her “don’t run with the pack” fireside floating-shelf installation — specifically, the black-and-white fella with the speckled bum — underscore her approach to design that delights. “I get so many comments on social media about this one guy turned the opposite direction, but I actually did that on purpose,” she explains. “You know, you gotta go to the beat of your own drum!”

The most shocking shade of all could be the one at the center of Jenna's home office. “People are always really surprised that [I] picked a white tanker desk,” she says. “The reason I did that is I didn’t want any colors influencing my design as I work!” Beneath and beside that sleek white surface, she’s found a way to add flair to her office furniture. “I did add unexpected pops of color by getting [polka-dot] magnets made that just stick right on to the tanker desk.”

Jenna’s massive, polka-dotted desk isn’t the only heavy hitter in this space. “My design office also acts as a second guest bedroom,” she explains. “So you want to talk about the power of upholstery? I got this free sleeper sofa off of Nextdoor. I just recovered it with new fabric and voilà, I got a perfect sofa for my office that also doubles up as a bed!”

Like the dining room, the office sported a substantial wall of built-in (and ho-hum) shelving and cabinets. Its glow-up came courtesy of Behr’s Yellow Groove, a gregarious goldenrod that she also splashed across the trim. A rainbow-shaped mirror sends that shade bouncing around the room, a feature wall papered with a riff on Andy Warhol’s Small Flowers refracts it with Pop Art panache — and those non-hues are no more.

“I’m a born and raised Nebraska farm girl, [and] I really feel like that farm life cultivated my creativity,” Jenna says. “My mom would make a lot of our clothes and she would refurbish furniture and whatnot, so she taught me a lot of what I know now. I just feel like a love of color and creativity along with being able to be a hands-on kind of chick has really served me well in this life and this career.”

We’ll concede that it’s easier to make your office supplies look good when they’re design books and luscious tile samples, but listen: The point here is that if you invest in some trays and stack strategically, you, too can have a workspace that looks as appealing as Jenna’s.

The previous homeowners’ barrage of beige barreled on into the primary suite, where neutral carpet, bare walls and matchy-matchy furniture added up to the interior-design equivalent of a shrug. Which meant, of course, that Jenna’s playing field was wide open.

At long last, some attention for those lovely angles! “The headboard plays off the same pitch of the roof, which is congruent throughout the entire house,” Jenna says. That magnificent purple carpet, in turn, is an explicit shoutout to The Saguaro Palm Springs, “which is my absolute favorite place to stay. It’s like the mothership is calling Jenna home.”

From cheeky neon installations and desktop affirmations to contemporary riffs on cottage-y needlepoint, Jenna never met a word or phrase she couldn’t display. Alexandra Ferguson’s "Let's Make Out" pillows are now collector’s items, but Jonathan Adler is a perennially on-point source for charismatic cushions like the ones on her bed.

Keith Haring’s signature shapes recur through Jenna’s spaces, and the Yellowpop LED “Love” collaboration on her bedroom wall both underscores that theme and provides an additional bit of the neon glow she favors.

Here’s another bit of the method behind Jenna’s madness: The neon text in the framed piece above this bedside table echoes the font in her other rooms’ installations. This is where letting your heart fill your cart pays off: because she fills her home with what speaks to her, the resulting combinations share a common language.

Sticking the landing on, say, a polychromatic sunken living room might feel like Olympic-level decorating, but it’s as simple as following your instincts. “People think that they’re afraid of color and they’re really not; they’re afraid of making a decision and living with that color,” Jenna contends. “So I really just hope to bridge the gap on people’s fear of using any sort of boldness within their home. Working with color sparks joy every day for me. I mean, how can I not be happy working with these bright, beautiful colorful palettes?”