This Rustic Ranch Is a Young Los Angeles Couple's Dream Vacation Home

Designer Rita Donahoe of Rita Chan Interiors describes Santa Ynez as “a peaceful valley sprinkled with vineyards, wineries and horse ranches and surrounded by a beautiful mountain range — specifically the notable Figueroa Mountain, known for its stunning wildflower bloom in the spring.” This is what drove her clients, a young couple from LA, to purchase the property that, with Rita’s help, would soon become their dreamy country escape from the hustle and bustle of city life. Her goal? To pull out the home's rustic roots and give much needed character to the recently renovated space.

The vacation property consists of the main house, a freestanding office space, a guest house, a garage and art studio, as well as multiple outdoor spaces to promote rest and relaxation, including a basketball court, vineyard and swimming pool. While the main house is home to three bedrooms, the renovation added three additional bedrooms spread throughout the various outbuildings. These extra rooms make the property the perfect getaway for guests who want to join the couple for weekends filled with olive canning, winemaking, floral arranging or simply sitting by the pool and enjoying the mild Santa Ynez climate.

Because the home had already been renovated in recent years, Rita was met with an interior that felt nice, but uninspired. “When we first walked into the space, it was clear that it had been recently updated, and it did feel clean and fresh but was lacking in soul and character. Honestly, I didn’t instantly have a vision,” she notes. That vision came with time spent getting to know her clients as well as directly from the Santa Ynez valley itself.

While it’s evident how an area like Santa Ynez could inspire a home’s design, her other inspiration may surprise you. Hanging above the breakfast nook is a light fixture that was one of the only pieces that her clients owned prior and requested she include in the home’s redesign. “We were thrilled because we both loved the Apparatus fixture and because it was tremendously helpful in guiding the aesthetic for not only the lighting but the whole house,” she says. The light fixtures' bespoke, modern-meets-rustic appeal was the perfect jumping off point for the property’s design destination.

To achieve the modern-meets-rustic aesthetic inspired by the Apparatus fixture, Rita's goal was to land somewhere between the ranch roots of the region surrounding the home and something more modern, intentionally using raw wood elements to point the design in the right direction. "If we were going for a more formal, traditional, ranch-style design, we would have incorporated more wood, with some darker, richer tones and detailing in the wood. But for this project, the intention was a light and bright modern ranch style that could still feel timeless," she says. "This resulted in a clean, more minimal foundation with rustic accents and more natural wood tones. The balance of materials always depends on the overall objective of the space. In this case, we wanted the warm, organic feeling of wood, but we didn’t want it to dominate, which is why it is layered into every room but in a more subtle way." She chose a bench more than 100 years old to line the entryway, cleverly outfitting it with a custom backing to hide the lower part of the window.