Inside a Santa Monica Spanish Revival
Project: Full-Service Interior Design | Location: Santa Monica, California | Size: 5,000 square feet
The Project
Few homes capture the soul of Santa Monica quite like a Spanish Revival — and few designers are as naturally suited to reimagining one. When Albina Hunt, founder of Los Angeles interior design studio Albina & Co., set out to transform her own 5,000 square foot Santa Monica home, the project became something far more meaningful than a renovation. It became the foundation of a new studio, a personal manifesto in plaster and oak, and a love letter to a life lived between continents.
Architecture as Anchor
The Santa Monica property is a quintessential Spanish Revival, the residential architectural style that defines some of the most coveted streets in the city — from Brentwood to Pacific Palisades to Santa Monica's own historic neighborhoods. Its whitewashed stucco exterior, clay tile roof, and graceful arched windows are immediately recognizable to anyone who has fallen in love with Southern California's built environment.
Inside, those same architectural gestures set the tone for everything that follows. Arched doorways and windows frame every sightline with an elegance that no renovation can manufacture. High, beamed ceilings create a sense of grandeur that is rare in residential design — the kind of scale that makes you exhale the moment you step through the door. These bones are the reason a Spanish Revival commands attention on the LA design circuit, and Albina was careful never to compete with them.
European Vintage Meets Modern Santa Monica Living
The design philosophy Albina applied throughout this home is one she describes as "European vintage meets modern Santa Monica living" — a tension that, in her hands, becomes an entirely coherent point of view.
Custom white floors ground every room with warmth and texture, their grain and patina nodding to the aged parquet of a Parisian apartment without feeling imported or out of place. Italian marble tiles appear in the kitchen and bathrooms, their veining adding the kind of quiet luxury that reveals itself slowly rather than announcing itself immediately. Adobe-finished walls — a natural choice for a Spanish Revival — add texture that photographs beautifully but, more importantly, creates the layered, artisan quality that distinguishes a designed home from a decorated one.
Furnishings are deliberately curated rather than matched: vintage European pieces sit alongside contemporary California craftsmanship, connected by a shared commitment to materiality, proportion, and comfort. Textured linens, worn leathers, and natural fibers reinforce the livable quality that is central to Albina's design ethos. This is not a home that asks you to take off your shoes at the door. It is a home that invites you to stay.
The Details That Define It
What sets this project apart — and what places it firmly within the conversation around the best interior design in Los Angeles — is the consistency of intention at every scale. The arched hardware echoes the arched doorways. The warm tones in the kitchen tile reappear in the bedroom textiles. Nothing is accidental, yet nothing feels labored.
This is the influence of Albina's time with Studio Jake Arnold made visible: the understanding that truly exceptional interiors are not built room by room, but conceived as a complete world.
Nods to Albina's years in Europe appear throughout — in the antique light fixtures, the scale of the dining table, the way a corridor is treated as a destination rather than a passage. These are the details that clients of Albina & Co. consistently point to when describing what makes their homes feel different from anything they've lived in before.
The Living Reality
Albina shares this home with her husband, son, and their dog Lulu. That fact is not incidental to the design — it is central to it. Every material choice, every furniture selection, every finish was made with real daily life in mind. The home is 5,000 square feet of deliberate design that functions beautifully for a family that actually lives in it.
This is the principle at the heart of Albina & Co., luxury and livability are not in opposition. That you can have hand-plastered adobe walls and a puppy. That Italian marble and a seven-year-old are not incompatible. That the most sophisticated homes are the ones people actually want to come home to.
This Santa Monica Spanish Revival project represents the full scope of what Albina & Co. offers Los Angeles homeowners: full-service interior design from concept through completion, with a deeply personal process that begins with understanding how a family lives before a single piece of furniture is selected.
Albina & Co. serves clients throughout Los Angeles, including Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Beverly Hills, and beyond. Virtual consultations are available for projects outside the immediate area.
Albina & Co. is a luxury interior design studio based in Los Angeles, California, founded by Albina Hunt.
The studio is recognized by Architectural Digest Pro and specializes in full-service residential interior design for discerning clients throughout the Los Angeles area. To learn more, contact albina@albinaandco.com.