Jeff Doubét teaches Spanish interiors construction tips for blending modern and traditional design elements into the historic Spanish homes of Santa Barbara. Jeff shares Design resources | Photos | How-to Tips for building arches, niches, plaster fireplaces and range hoods into your own Santa Barbara Spanish style home. Modern leaning ideas that can substantially increase the perceived value of your own Spanish interior design.
The special interior design details in this local Santa Barbara Riviera neighborhood home were developed as a collaboration between the homeowner and myself. We also worked together on the Contemporary Modern Spanish exterior.
Are you contemplating a purchase or remodel of a local Santa Barbara or Montecito fixer upper home? I hope the insights on this page will be an encouragement as you plan, design and build your beautiful Spanish home.
Designing Spanish Interiors in Santa Barbara, CA
Furnishings, appliances, art and other home goods are a big part of Spanish-style interior design. Equally important in custom Santa Barbara style Spanish home renovations: designing + building improvements to the interior architecture.
ABOVE: For the Spanish-style kitchen renovation, a black 36″ La Cornue range was specified. See my blog post on how the custom plaster hood was designed and built.
Spanish-style products on Amazon, and my project overviews where they were installed.
Building Spanish Home Interiors
Jeff Doubét teaches Spanish interiors construction tips for Santa Barbara design remodels. Blending modern and traditional design elements into Spanish-style historic homes for new generations to enjoy. There are many steps a homeowner will take as they create an inspiring home and landscape. Thoughtful design concepts need to be created. Then there are technical working drawings, building permits, construction and interior decorating.
AFTER Photo: The completed interior design included a new plaster fireplace with decorative hood, thicker interior walls and a staircase redesign.
Designing Spanish Home Interiors
Interior Design Sketch: This was my earliest design drawing for the living room.
Ideas included redesigning the fireplace and staircase, as well as a new decorative HVAC register.
AFTER Photo: A close up of how the Spanish staircase design turned out. Scroll further to see the process of how it was built.
Here is a shot showing how a new high quality firebox replaced the old masonry firebox. The early firebox was too “short” for the living room focal point.
ABOVE: This photo shows how the early fireplace design concept was mocked up with thin Luan plywood (and painted white). The homeowner wanted to see the scale and proportion of the fireplace design, before real construction began.
After seeing the fireplace mock up, the homeowner requested that I tweak the design to have a more modern look and feel. This is my revised sketch for the fireplace design.
Spanish Interior Design Construction Photos
Construction of a thicker wall enhanced the appearance of the elliptical arch. Structural plywood was specified by the project engineer to enable construction of the see-through niche at the staircase landing.
THE EASY BUTTON TO VIEW ALL PROJECTS ON SITE
Developing beautiful Spanish Interiors in Santa Barbara
Creating beautiful, high quality Spanish-style homes requires an investment in the special focal points of your interior design. Employing independent Artisans is one way to build custom elements such as fireplaces and range hoods.
Here, a talented team of local Artisans handcraft the custom Spanish-style fireplace design. See more photos of Jeff Doubét custom designed Spanish style fireplaces under construction throughout Santa Barbara and Montecito, California.
Fast forward a few months later and you can see how everything turned out. A simple color palette works well with the built elements. The black staircase handrail, balusters and dark stained stair treads look nice with the black hearth.
Designing and building a Spanish staircase
For the redesign of this historic Spanish-style staircase, I developed another concept rendering. It was a starting point for new design discussions with the homeowner.
BEFORE Photo: The original staircase was a simple wood railing and 2 x 2 balusters. Previous generations had painted it all white.
Spanish-style Staircase Design: This original Jeff Doubét design sketch illustrates the vision for a new wrought iron railing that would curve down onto short, flared plaster wing walls. The first three steps would have a curve to them, and they would lead up to a small landing before the main climb of the staircase.
My concept design ideas were well received, and a preliminary full size model was proposed. Here, the Spanish staircase is being mocked up using thin Luan plywood. The main goal of the mock up was to visualize the proposed three-dimensional forms. The contractor and his crew would use this to figure out how to permanently build the sophisticated compound curves of the wing walls.
ABOVE Photo: a closer look at how the general contractor used thin craft wood to gently bend and “skin” over a wood frame.
After the mock up had done its purpose, it was removed along with the wood stair railings. A new clean air return vent was installed. Here, the see-through niche and elliptical archway are in the drywall stage of construction. See Artisans applying drywall mud to a Spanish arch.
Spanish-style staircase design
The homeowner is a talented designer, and decided to develop technical drawings for the project. It was the compound curved wing walls at the bottom of the wrought iron railing that was everyone’s biggest challenge.
The CAD drawing he developed for the Spanish staircase design was helpful for the wrought iron railing fabricator and installer, as well.
And this is how all of our hard work paid off. The contemporary Spanish staircase railing is quite mesmerizing to look at. The flat black wrought iron and dark stained wood stair treads contrast beautifully with the light European Oak floors.
This photo showcases how the custom Spanish-style iron railing balusters terminate into the plaster wing walls. This shot also shows how nicely the arched wood stair tread design turned out.
In the image above you can see how the plaster wing walls for the railing partially protrude into the living room. Note also how the see-through niche received a short section of matching wrought iron railing. Witness contemporary art + décor: Beautiful combinations for modern Spanish-style interior design.
Spanish kitchen design ideas
The color black is a prominent color specified in the interior design of this contemporary Spanish home in Santa Barbara. In the kitchen, a black La Cornue range was paired with black kitchen cabinets and other accent pieces. This high-end Spanish kitchen design was prominent focal point within this custom Riviera home in Santa Barbara, CA.
The Spanish range hood was hand fabricated in cement plaster. To learn more about the process of creating this custom designed Santa Barbara style plaster hood, see my blog post Spanish Range Hood Design, Photos and Resources. There you will see many photos of this very talented, featured Artisan building the hood.
The completed Spanish kitchen design in this high-end home renovation in Santa Barbara incudes reclaimed wood ceiling beams and open shelving, as well as light stone countertops and white backsplash tiles at the range.
Well friend, this wraps another site visit episode in beautiful Santa Barbara, CA. I hope you enjoyed learning how to infuse more Santa Barbara Style into your own Spanish home interior design project. Scroll to explore more helpful links and resources for designing and building your own Spanish-style home and landscape.
