James Lumsden | Free life

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Californian interior designer James Lumsden makes his beach projects turn into wonderful shelters for their owners, away from the conventional decoration.

Ideal to relax, enjoy a family retreat or spend a few days with friends, each project must be in harmony with the needs of the client, being necessary to obtain comfort all year, but without forgetting that landscape is an important part of the interior housing. "Sometimes the adjacent landscape is tropical and lush and green and sometimes it is the sensual baking sand. All of this must be reflected in the interiors because to be on the beach is to be out in the landscape," explains the designer.

In a coastal city, Lumsden recreated a Pied-a-Terre on the twentieth floor. This is a small refuge of a business man who can enjoy fantastic views of the beach when he needs to be there on business. In Malibu, Lumsden adapted a home for a family. ”This is a gathering place for a well-travelled family to be used both for summertime vacations and, alternatively, for a quiet winter weekend. Here the views and sunsets are sweeping and glorious.”

James Lumsden ensures that a beach house has to be different from the primary residence, making possible the disconnection from our usual routine and enhancing relaxation and other feelings that make us enjoy some quiet days. For the Malibu home he used a more traditional decoration and created a wonderful atmospehere with the primitive and folk arts of pieces of the owner´s collection. ”In a half hour they can enter a different world”.

Materials and decorative elements should be above all very practical but without forgetting an elegant image because, after all, "we want them to be good looking too.”

For the designer, a beach house has to be synonymous with freedom: ”Your other world, with its’ cares and responsibilities, is left behind and the expanse of sea and sand is an expression of that. Remember the first day of summer vacation when you got out of school? That is it! "

Text by Guillermo Carballo
Translation by Paula Geanau

Photo credit courtesy by Don Lewis