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A Renowned L.A. Design Dealer Customizes Every Inch of His Laurel Canyon Home to Showcase a Vivacious Collection of Works

Thomas Lavin and partner Destin Bass transform a ho-hum ranch house into a glamorous retreat with help from designer Gary Hutton

By Michael Slenske Photography by Sam Frost Styled by Alexander Irvine
Modern living room with curved sofas, round geometric rug, and colorful artwork on walls. Large windows with garden view.
Thomas Lavin and Destin Bass worked with architect Eric Staten and interior designer Gary Hutton to renovate this midcentury ranch house in Los Angeles. In the great room, a curved sectional, Powell & Bonnell side table, and vintage Italian chairs re-covered in a Casamance fabric rest atop a custom Tai Ping rug. Artworks by Brandon Landers (left) and Cosmo Whyte pop against walls painted in Benjamin Moore’s Jute.

A decade after meticulously renovating a 1958 ranch house on a former Boy Scout colony in the Hollywood Hills, Thomas Lavin realized he and his partner, Destin Bass, needed more space. Just before the pandemic, the Los Angeles design dealer narrowly lost out on a larger property above Sunset Plaza, kicking off a two-and-a-half-year search through more than 60 homes. “When I saw this one, I felt like Maureen O’Hara in Miracle on 34th Street,” says Lavin with a laugh, seated in the backyard of the 3,500 square-foot Laurel Canyon home he and Bass have shared for the past year. “It checked every box.”

The property had everything they had dreamed of: a private plot at the end of the street, a pool, and unobstructed views of the Mount Olympus neighborhood and downtown. It reminded Lavin of Big Sur, his favorite place in the world.

Two people holding hands, standing on a modern patio with a scenic view of a city skyline in the background.
Thomas Lavin (left) and Destin Bass outside their Laurel Canyon home.
Hallway art gallery with various framed artworks on the walls and a unique tree-like sculpture visible at the far end.
A floating art wall in a corridor houses a tight display of works by Anna Glantz, Tarwuk, Sarah Ball, and Raffi Kalenderian, among others.
Contemporary art piece in modern living room with unique chairs and piano.
A painting by Coady Brown and a vintage French chair in dichroic car paint provide a chromatic splash against a curtain of a de Le Cuona fabric. The nearby high-back chair is by Carlo Bugatti, and the piano is by Steinway & Sons.

For Bass, restoring the house became a true “love project”—a collaboration in the couple’s passions, aesthetics, and shared comforts. “I still pinch myself every morning when I wake up to the sunrise creeping over Mount Olympus, which is what the primary bedroom faces,” says Bass, an accomplished stage actor who now also works in sales for Thomas Lavin. “We call it our ‘fun house.’”

It took nearly three years to transform the quirky five-bedroom California ranch—known to neighbors as “Harriet’s house” after the woman who built it in 1961 and lived there for over six decades—into a stage set for living and entertaining. The property initially had a certain Boogie Nights appeal, with sliding glass doors, an outdoor Jack-and-Jill bathroom, and a trapezoidal pool complete with an inset planter sprouting palm trees.

Dining room with dark blue walls, modern chandelier, and wooden chairs around a round table.
An Ingo Maurer chandelier twinkles in a dining area painted in Benjamin Moore’s Old Navy to create an effect evocative of the night sky. The vintage Gulassa table is surrounded by custom chairs with Carlucci velvet seats and Misia fabric backs. The paintings are by Ryan Driscoll (left) and Louis Fratino. The earthenware sculpture is by Ann Agee.

The couple enlisted a design team of three longtime friends and collaborators: architect Eric Staten, landscape architect Martin Schwanauer, and interior designer Gary Hutton, who has worked on all of Lavin’s homes. Together, they turned the house into a sophisticated, resort-like retreat—dark, sexy, and unassumingly expansive behind the cast-bronze entryway doors set at the street corner.

Inside, the sprawling interior feels as much primary residence as vacation home, drawing on the couple’s travels throughout California and Japan and Lavin’s ever-growing art and design collection. “They needed a house that worked for 200 people,” Staten observes, “and just for two.”

I still pinch myself every morning when I wake up to the sunrise creeping over Mount Olympus”

Destin Bass

The couple love to host and open their home for gatherings: a Hammer Museum patron group, showroom clients, and their annual Boxing Day celebration. They also wanted spaces for meditation, exercise, and the spontaneous lunches and brunches that have become a fixture of their social circle.

Staten vaulted the ceilings in the main living areas, converted part of the former garage into a gym, and consolidated the bedrooms into a generously sized suite and a guest room complemented by a cozy library. An open kitchen flows into a petite dining area and an L-shaped great room large enough to accommodate Lavin’s Steinway & Sons grand piano, where he and Bass are known to launch into impromptu performances of classic Broadway standards at parties.

Modern bedroom with a canopy bed, dark bedding, art on walls, and cozy lighting.
Anchoring the primary bedroom, a Liaigre four-poster bed is paired with antique Swedish nightstands and a bench in a Donghia leather. Walls sheathed in a Hartmann&Forbes grass cloth serve as a textural backdrop to works by (from left) Amoako Boafo, Salman Toor, and Sergio Miguel. Glimpsed through the doorway to the right is an archival pigment print from Paul Mpagi Sepuya.
luxurious bathroom with marble wall, dual mirrors, modern lighting, wood vanity, and a vase with purple flower on the counter
In the primary bath, Jonathan Browning sconces glow against walls clad in quartzite from Artistic Tile.

In the great room, Hutton designed a custom rug he calls Diamond, inspired by his and Lavin’s admiration for the jewelry of Joel Arthur Rosenthal, better known as JAR. “One of my famous sayings is that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the ones who love sparkly things and the ones who won’t admit it,” says Hutton, who also persuaded Lavin to install an Ingo Maurer light fixture suspended within nylon nets above the dining table, creating the effect of a crystalline spiderweb. “I just thought, …‘Well, Thomas is a gem.’”

Beyond the design details, one mandate remained nonnegotiable: There had to be enough wall space for the art. Throughout the home, works by Celia Paul, Salman Toor, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Amoako Boafo, and many others are thoughtfully installed in nearly all the rooms and alcoves. “Every piece has a moment to shine,” says Bass.

Modern patio featuring a large decorative plant and artistic stone sculpture with ocean view.
Landscape architect Martin Schwanauer placed a staghorn fern outside the house near a sculptural fountain by Ficus Interfaith.

The substantial grounds also gave the couple an opportunity to indulge a growing passion for sculpture. Among the additions are a 19th-century Japanese Noh mask hanging over the fireplace, prompted by a vignette at the Villa La Coste in Provence, France. Another is a two-tiered fountain by artist duo Ficus Interfaith, featuring terrazzo inlays depicting a knot of serpents ascending its cascading walls. “At night it acts like a lantern,” Lavin says.

The sense of having found a permanent refuge hasn’t gone unnoticed. As Lavin’s mother remarked after they moved in, “You built Eden. Why would you ever leave?”

A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2026 Late Fall Issue under the headline “West of Eden.” Subscribe to the magazine.

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