The domino dream: no faux mo
Westlake Village smells like wet concrete and eucalyptus in the mornings. The mist hangs low over the hills, and everything feels half-erased and newly invented. I wake up at six-thirty most days. Before touching work, I feed the cat, make an espresso, and step outside barefoot to breathe the air. There’s something holy about that first inhale—the quiet, the coolness, the little moment before the world starts making noise.
This is all new for me. I used to wake up and start sorting through emails before I was even fully conscious—half-dreaming, half-dealing with other people’s problems before I’d even touched my own. Now I make myself stop. I don’t open my laptop, I don’t reach for my phone. I feed the cat, make an espresso, step outside into the misty Westlake air and quietly observe my world outside the bubble. For a few minutes, I don’t allow myself to think about anything—my job, my inbox, my house, my family, the projects waiting for answers. None of it. Just the smell of wet concrete, eucalyptus, and dirt after rain. It’s the only time of day that doesn’t ask me to solve something.
Then…
I look back through the window at the living room, and I think: it’ll do. It’s fine. But that’s the problem.
Right now, the living room feels like a Rose Bowl flea market stall that never packed up—assembled correctly, technically right, but without a soul to animate it. Like the skeleton reindeer in Nightmare Before Christmas—everything’s there, everything’s in place, but nothing’s alive. I’ve been circling that feeling for weeks, trying to name it. Sometimes I think I’m one decision away from getting it right. One fabric, one color, one correction that suddenly makes it all click.
I made the first move getting rid of the current coffee table and replacing it with this:
Sofa
So I started experimenting with colors for the sofa. Ochre looked cinematic at first, but in my light, it turned theatrical and bossy. The whole room lost air. Olive had gravitas but zero pulse; it looked like it wanted to give a lecture on discipline. Camel was tasteful to the point of boredom, like a catalog page that never earned a wrinkle. Mustard looked brilliant for a day, then under the afternoon sun it felt anxious, overheated. Each color almost worked—but each one flattened something else.
Here was the directive: something I could sink into with a full glass of whiskey. I don’t even drink whiskey, but I want the sofa to feel like that—slow, amber, heavy in the hand. This is the most public room in the house, the threshold between the outside world and my own little fever dream of a life. It’s where the performance drops, where guests hover at the edge of reality before stepping into my particular brand of fantasy. The sofa had to be an invitation. Permission. Sit on me. Stay awhile.
My first instinct was Good Times at Davey Wayne’s, which, for the record, is the best bar in Los Angeles. That hazy, retro, everything’s-a-little-sticky energy. The velvet couches, the amber light, the confidence of a place that doesn’t care if you get it. But when I really looked at my space, I realized that was exactly what I already had—too much basement, too much flea market, too much nostalgia cosplay. I didn’t need more of that. I needed something with restraint, with intrigue. Less “found object,” more “intentional choice.”
I wanted the room to breathe differently. To pull you in like a low note in a song you can’t name but can feel in your ribs.
Then I landed on plum... or is it merlot? Not as a “choice,” but as a realization. It was deep, magnetic, quietly confident—like it had nothing to prove. Plum doesn’t fight the mural or the ochre table; it holds them both, gives them context. It’s not pretty, it’s inevitable. The sofa is still blue for now, but once I imagined plum, everything else in the room started shifting. You can feel when the right answer walks in; suddenly, the edit becomes ruthless.
Pottery Barn - Faux Mohair Merlot
The plan is to reupholster it in faux mohair—about $59 a yard instead of $300 for the real thing. I love mohair, but I also love paying my mortgage. Faux mohair feels like rebellion with manners—soft, rich, and unapologetically “close enough.” And yes, technically it’s faux mo, which means I can live my life free of both the real mohair price tag and the FOMO. Faux-Mo with no FOMO. Get it????????????????????? Applause, applause, applause, applause.
Rug
The rug didn’t even cross my mind until later. I’d been ignoring it—neutral, serviceable, background noise. Then one morning, I went back through my old Pinterest boards, the digital time capsule of what I used to love before I got practical. And there it was: the Marie Olsson rug. Black and white, long-haired, alive. It looked like it could breathe. It also cost $4,000.
The rug… isn’t it like the most awesome rug EVER?!!
I closed the tab. Then opened it again. Then dragged the image into Google and typed “rug.” That led me down a rabbit hole to a small weaving studio in Bulgaria—no marketing team, no fancy website, just photographs that looked like proof of life. They make a version with the same graphic energy but in warm café-au-lait browns instead of black and white. About $130 per square foot, which comes out to around $900 for my size.
The browns are different, softer, more human. And honestly, I like that better. The Marie Olsson version was starting to feel a little Beetlejuice, and while I love Beetlejuice, I don’t want to live inside him. The Bulgarian rug has the same confidence, but less costume.
Now the vision is clearer. The blue sofa is still waiting, but the plum is in my head like a melody that won’t leave. The rug will ground it all, warm it up, give the room a reason to exhale. I’ve started editing like a cinematographer—fewer tall pieces along the sofa wall so the mural can breathe, a single metallic accent to catch light, no chrome, no clutter. Art raised just enough to breathe. Space between objects feels more important than the objects themselves.
Plum works because it deepens the shadows and lets the rest of the room hum quietly instead of shout. It bridges everything—the mural, the ochre, the gold accents—without defaulting to beige. It’s mature but strange, deliberate but still a little wild. Domino isn’t about perfection; it’s about pulse. And this, finally, feels like pulse.
Right now, it’s still in transition. The rug is being woven. The sofa is still in its old blue suit. But for the first time, the room feels like it’s on the brink of something. As if all the pieces have stopped competing and are just waiting for the spark. It’s the in-between moment before magic happens—when the bones are still bones, but you can sense the soul about to enter the room.
ChatGPT generated image of the new design…
confession time
Be honest — are you designing for your guests, or for the person you actually are when no one’s watching? Because this sofa? It’s for her. So go ahead. Confess your crimes. Tell me what you’d do to your living room if judgment disappeared for twenty-four hours.
Or…maybe let’s turn it around — what do you want to talk about?
What room is driving you crazy? The problem corner, the boring rug, the thing that makes you sigh every time you walk past it? Shout it below. It’s fine. You’re among friends here. We’re all just trying to make the chaos look intentional.
