ClaremontRenovation Berkeley Hills, CA

Our clients’ home in the Berkeley Hills is rarely without guests. A couple with two young children and two cats, they love to cook, travel and entertain, and their parents visit often. They asked for a guest suite that friends would look forward to and that would stay comfortable for their parents in the years ahead. We designed it as a retreat inspired by the Moroccan hammam: a bathroom wrapped in handmade tile, with a deep green bedroom beside it.

The newly added bathroom is tiled from floor to ceiling in white zellige, so each handmade square catches the light a little differently, and it takes its color from the floor, a patterned Moroccan cement tile of green and blue. A cast iron double sink sits against a tiled ledge with a honed Calacatta marble top, beneath a large arched mirror and a pair of terracotta pendants. The walk-in shower is easy to step into, with a rain head, a hand shower and a wide tiled niche over a pillowed mosaic floor.

The bedroom is the quiet half of the suite. We skim-coated the walls to a smooth finish and painted them a deep green, above new walnut-stained floors matched to those in the rest of the home. We layered the lighting, down to the terracotta sconces at the bedside, which echo the pendants in the bathroom and tie the suite together. Guests of every generation now have a place of their own when they come to stay.