Experienced Interior Designer serving Pacific Palisades, California

Luxury Interior Designer Serving Pacific Palisades, California

Sara Arndt Interior Design offers full-service luxury interior design to homeowners throughout Pacific Palisades — one of Los Angeles's most beloved and architecturally extraordinary communities. Nestled where the Santa Monica Mountains meet the Pacific Ocean, the Palisades has long attracted those who want more from a home than square footage and a view: they want a place that genuinely reflects who they are, how they live, and the particular quality of light that falls through a canyon window on a clear November morning.

With over 20 years of experience designing exceptional homes across Los Angeles and Southern California, Sara brings the full-service, white-glove design process that the Palisades's most discerning homeowners deserve — managing every detail from first sketch through final installation, so the experience of creating your home is as considered as the home itself.

Designing for Pacific Palisades Now — Including Post-Wildfire Rebuilds

The January 2025 wildfires reshaped parts of Pacific Palisades in ways that will take years to fully understand. For the families rebuilding — on the Riviera, in the Highlands, on the bluffs above Castellammare — the process is not just logistical. It is deeply personal. You are not just choosing flooring and cabinetry. You are deciding who you want to be in this home, what you want it to carry forward, and what you are ready to let go of.

Sara approaches post-fire interior design with the combination of practical expertise and genuine human care that this kind of work demands. She has spent her career managing complex, multi-contractor renovation projects for clients who need a calm, authoritative partner — not another vendor to track. For clients rebuilding from the ground up, Sara prefers to be engaged from the earliest design development stages, working alongside your architect and builder so that every interior decision — the flow of rooms, the proportion of windows, the placement of built-ins — reflects a unified vision from the beginning.

If you are in the early stages of planning a Pacific Palisades rebuild and have not yet engaged an interior designer, now is the right time. The decisions made in the first months of a new build are the ones that shape everything that follows. Getting them right the first time saves months of revision and thousands of dollars in changes — and results in a home that feels like it was always meant to be.

Full-Service Luxury Interior Design for Pacific Palisades Homes

Sara Arndt Interior Design manages every element of your project from the first conversation through the final walkthrough. Services available to Pacific Palisades clients include:

New Construction & Post-Fire Rebuild Interior Design — Working from design development through final installation, Sara collaborates closely with your architect and general contractor to ensure that your new home's interior is coherent, beautiful, and deeply personal from the first day you walk in the door.

Whole-Home Interior Design — For existing Palisades homes — on the Riviera, in Rustic Canyon, in Huntington Palisades, in the Highlands — Sara provides complete interior design that respects the architecture of each property while making it fully your own. Whether you are refreshing a home you have lived in for years or furnishing a recently purchased estate from scratch, Sara brings the same meticulous attention to every project.

Custom Kitchen & Bathroom Design — Pacific Palisades kitchens and bathrooms are often the heart of significant renovation investments. Sara designs bespoke kitchens and bathrooms that balance the practical demands of California family life with the aesthetic standards that Palisades homeowners hold. Custom cabinetry, professional appliances, imported stone, and artisanal hardware — all sourced and managed by Sara's team.

Coastal Contemporary & Indoor-Outdoor Design — The Palisades's greatest gift is its setting — the way the canyon air moves through a house, the way ocean light shifts from morning to afternoon, the way indoor and outdoor space can blur into something that feels entirely unique to Southern California living. Sara designs for this. Her window treatments, furniture selections, and spatial choices are made in conversation with the natural environment outside, not in spite of it.

Custom Window & Wall Treatments — The Palisades's varied microclimates — coastal glare in Castellammare, dappled canyon shade in Rustic Canyon, mountain light in the Highlands — demand window treatments designed specifically for each home's orientation and setting. Sara's custom draperies, shutters, and solar shades are crafted to work with Pacific Palisades light, not fight it.

Full Project Management — Sara coordinates every subcontractor, every delivery, every installation. For clients managing the emotional complexity of a rebuild — while also working, raising families, and living temporarily elsewhere — the value of having one trusted person responsible for the entire interior scope cannot be overstated.

Serving Pacific Palisades's Most Distinctive Neighborhoods

The Riviera — The Riviera is Pacific Palisades at its most grand — Italian-inspired street names (Amalfi, San Remo, Corsica, Napoli), sweeping estates on wide lots with deep setbacks, and some of the most coveted ocean, canyon, and city views in all of Los Angeles. Riviera properties range from $5.5 million to over $50 million. They deserve an interior designer who understands that scale and responds with proportional thinking — not simply filling rooms with large furniture, but designing spaces that hold their grandeur while remaining genuinely livable.

Rustic Canyon — Rustic Canyon is unlike anywhere else in Los Angeles. Its wooded setting, seasonal creek, and community of architect-designed homes — including works by Richard Neutra, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., and Craig Ellwood — make it one of the most character-rich residential environments in Southern California. Sara designs for Rustic Canyon with the care its architectural heritage demands, honoring original details while creating interiors that feel current, personal, and deeply connected to the canyon around them.

Huntington Palisades — The Huntington Palisades offers some of the Palisades's most walkable streets, finest beach access, and grandest oceanfront properties — homes that range from 7,000 to 30,000 square feet and command prices well above $15 million. Sara designs for Huntington Palisades estates with a full understanding of what oceanfront living requires: materials that stand up to salt air, window treatments that manage coastal glare, and interiors that frame extraordinary views without being overwhelmed by them.

Castellammare — Castellammare's Mediterranean character — winding hillside roads, Italianate architecture, coastal bluff vistas, proximity to the Getty Villa — calls for interiors that feel appropriately timeless. Sara's approach to Castellammare homes draws on the European aesthetic embedded in the neighborhood's DNA while making each home distinctly personal and thoroughly modern in its function.

Palisades Highlands — The Highlands's newer custom estates and gated enclaves offer the largest homes in the Palisades, often with the most dramatic mountain and ocean views. These are homes designed to impress — and Sara's full-service approach ensures that the interior lives up to the architecture, the setting, and the investment.

Marquez Knolls — Perched on the hillsides between the Highlands and Palisades Village, Marquez Knolls combines family-friendly community with genuine luxury — mid-century modern cottages alongside larger custom estates, all with the panoramic views that the elevation provides. Sara designs for Marquez Knolls homes with equal facility across architectural periods and scales.

What Makes Pacific Palisades Interior Design Different

Designing for Pacific Palisades requires fluency in several design languages at once. In one neighborhood you are working with the old-world grandeur of a Riviera estate; in the next, the precise geometry of a Neutra-influenced Rustic Canyon original. Across the community, you are always designing in relationship to one of the world's most dramatic natural settings — the meeting of mountains and ocean that defines the Palisades's particular quality of light and space.

Sara's 20+ years of full-service luxury design in Los Angeles means she brings both the breadth to work across these contexts and the depth to do each one justice. Her project management expertise means that the complexity of a Palisades project — whether a post-fire rebuild involving architects, engineers, and a dozen subcontractors, or a whole-home renovation of an existing estate — is handled with clarity, communication, and accountability from beginning to end.

Frequently Asked Questions — Pacific Palisades Interior Design

Are you working with clients who are rebuilding after the 2025 wildfires? Yes. Sara has deep experience with complex, ground-up residential projects and understands the particular demands — practical and emotional — of post-fire reconstruction. She works closely with architects and builders and prefers to be engaged early in the design process for rebuild projects, so that the interior vision informs structural and architectural decisions from the beginning. If you are in the planning stages, now is exactly the right time to be in conversation.

How do you handle HOA architectural guidelines in neighborhoods like The Huntington, The Highlands, or The Riviera? Sara's project management process includes full coordination with HOA architectural review processes. In neighborhoods with active HOAs and specific design requirements, Sara documents all material selections and design decisions to support the approval process, working to ensure compliance without compromising the creative vision.

Do you work with the architect and builder already on our project? Yes — and Sara prefers it. The best results in residential design come when the interior designer, architect, and builder are in close, early communication. Sara has extensive experience working as part of multi-professional teams on complex Los Angeles residential projects and brings a collaborative, solution-oriented approach to every partnership.

We lost our home in the fires and are starting completely fresh. Where do we begin with interior design? Start with a discovery call. Sara will listen to your story, ask questions about how you lived in your previous home and how you want to live in your next one, and share her honest perspective on the process ahead. There is no obligation, and no pressure. The conversation itself is often clarifying. You can reach Sara at (562) 307-1566 or sara@interiordesignla.com.

What is the typical timeline for a full interior design project in Pacific Palisades? For a whole-home renovation or new build, Sara typically works on a 6–14 month timeline from signed agreement through final installation, depending on the scope of custom work and the complexity of the project. For post-fire rebuilds, the timeline aligns with the construction schedule and Sara coordinates installation to ensure the interior is ready when the home is.

Begin Your Pacific Palisades Design Project

Whether you are rebuilding, renovating, or furnishing a newly purchased home, Sara would be honored to hear about your project. Discovery calls are complimentary and completely confidential.

Call or text: (562) 307-1566 — Email: sara@interiordesignla.com — Book online: www.interiordesignla.com

Sara Arndt Interior Design is based in Claremont, California, and serves clients throughout Los Angeles, including Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Hidden Hills, and beyond, as well as Orange County and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Check our work in Pacific Palisades, CA