Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin Kelly Wearstler
47 snips
Mar 11, 2026 
Kelly Wearstler, acclaimed Los Angeles designer and creative director, blends materiality, place, and collaboration in bold hospitality and residential projects. She discusses large-scale coordination, reviving vintage materials, cross-disciplinary artist collaborations, balancing maximalism with restraint, acoustic and lighting strategies, and designing site-specific programs like casinos and hotels.
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Introduce Color Gradually Through Materials
- Treat color as emotional and test it slowly in material form before committing to rooms.
- Kelly considers white and black as colors, experiments with muted palettes, and presents textiles and samples to clients iteratively.
Rebuilding Home After Fire Keeps Memory Through Objects
- Kelly described rebuilding after losing her previous house to fire, keeping some elements like front rocks and the footprint while reimagining interiors.
- She plans to reintroduce a planted center tree and familiar sculptural gestures to revive memory in the new home.
Bold Stripe Experiment Failed And Taught Caution
- Kelly shared a design failure early in her career where she striped an entire client's house and repainted it herself after it flopped.
- The experience made her wary of extreme moves across whole homes and taught her to pilot bold ideas in smaller doses.