Talk Shop: Steve & Brooke Giannetti // Giannetti Home
Husband and wife duo Steve and Brooke Giannetti are known for creating artfully designed homes in the couple's signature “Patina Style”, a mix of California cool, worldly antiques, objects both found and loved, and a hint of Gustavian elegance with some major Ojai charm. Replete with rambling gardens, storybook animals, and patina galore, the Giannetti’s spaces are truly out of this world.
Steve, a renowned architect, has designed homes around the globe for clients in nearly every architectural style, while Brooke runs the team’s interior design studio, and is the author of the popular blog and Instagram, Velvet and Linen. In 1994, Brooke and Steve founded Giannetti Home, a full service Architectural and Interior design firm. Today, the Giannetti Home store is focused on offering the Giannetti Clothing line as well custom Giannetti Home upholstery pieces, imported European antiques and select home furnishings, and visuals.
The firm’s work has been published in Veranda, The New York Times, Santa Barbara Magazine, C Magazine, Departures, and Luxe Magazine, as well as several other national outlets. In addition, the Giannettis have authored the books Patina Style, Patina Farm, and Patina Living. And, they just published their fourth book— Patina Homes!
Brooke and Steve live on Patina Farm in Ojai, CA with their miniature pygmy goats, babydoll sheep, highland cows, potbelly pigs, Sicilian donkeys, chickens, Shihtzu pups, and Hector, the house bunny. As one could imagine, the book is filled to the brim with absolutely gorgeous imagery, highlighting the beautiful gardens, barns, interiors and architecture that mix together like a special type of SoCal alchemy.
Patina Homes is the first book to feature the architectural brilliance of Steve and the homes he has designed for clients. For many of these projects, Brooke collaborated on the interiors. These spaces demonstrate the Giannetti’s definition of beauty: where modern, classical, and industrial architectural elements are merged to create exquisite environments enhanced with antiques – and inspiring, refined interiors. We loved sitting down with this dynamic duo, and hope you do too!
Congrats on your newest book, Patina Homes! Where did the inspiration for this book come from?
Thank you! We are so excited to share our latest book that features some of our favorite homes we have designed for our clients. We found the inspiration for creating this book in the stories and dreams our clients shared with us during the design process.
Out of the 12 homes featured in Patina Homes, do you have a favorite? Why?
They all hold a special place in our hearts, but if we had to pick one we would choose our own home, Patina Farm.
Every decision we made while designing our own home supports the life we dreamed of living, a creative life connected to and inspired by nature and our animals.
Describe your style in three words or less:
Relaxed, Timeless, Beautiful.
What have been the three biggest influences on your aesthetic in your life:
Brooke: The indoor/outdoor California lifestyle, marrying a classically trained architect, and discovering flea markets in my 20’s.
Steve: Working in my family’s ornamental plaster studio, surrounded by craftspeople in a chalky plaster covered setting that was equal parts industrial and classical. Moving from Maryland, where I was surrounded by only traditional architecture to Los Angeles, where there is more freedom to create something new.
Marrying Brooke, who taught me the importance of emotions in the design process.
How did you two start your company, and what is your favorite thing about what you do:
We met when Steve moved to Los Angeles, about 30 years ago. We were married soon after that and started working together. At first, Brooke took care of the business side while Steve focused on design. Brooke always had an interest in interiors, helping to design our own homes and the interiors of our friends’ homes. When our youngest child, Leila, started kindergarten, about 16 years ago, Brooke began collaborating with Steve on more design projects. The partnership grew from there.
Our favorite part of what we do is the satisfaction we feel when we help our clients make the leap to create their dream homes. There is always a little fear of leaving the life they know for the unknown. It’s our job to help them fully visualize their wonderful knew life and get them so excited that they feel like they have no choice but to make their dream a reality.
What does your home say about you:
We are lovers of beauty who find inspiration in the natural world around us.
Where do you find inspiration:
Our daily life on Patina Farm, European gardens (particularly the Cotswold gardens and the gardens of Nicole de Visian), and Belgian designers and their ability to beautifully pair modern and rustic architecture. The simple but beautiful detailing of antique Swedish furniture.
Who are your style icons:
Edwin Lutyens, Carlo Scarpa, Sir John Soane, Gertrude Jekyll, Bunny Mellon.
What are your key ingredients for entertaining:
Fresh food from our garden, and a relaxed, comfortable, inviting atmosphere.
Do you collect anything:
Brooke: I love garden ornament… vintage cement animals (the mossier the better), faux bois furniture (also the mossier the better!), any kind of mushrooms (cement, wood, paper mache). I place them in collections inside our home as well as in our garden.
Steve: Vintage dive watches.
Favorite Instagram accounts to follow for inspiration:
Oh, there are so many! You can look at the people I follow on my Instagram account.
I follow all 1225 people for different reasons. They all inspire!
What design “rule” do you always follow, and which is made to be broken:
We always believe that design decisions should be made with an intention: what emotion are you trying to create?
All Design fads are made to be broken.
What are you working on right now:
We have several beautiful homes in Los Angeles that we are designing with our clients.
Each one is unique and tells our clients’ story: a home inspired by our clients’ childhood in rural West Virginia, a beautiful mediterranean home in Malibu that we designed with our clients who lost their home in one of the recent fires… We are also working on an amazing estate in Nashville that will allow our clients to fulfill their dream of hosting events for their entire community.
Favorite fabric/wallpaper:
We love using vintage fabrics for the same reason we love antiques: they bring their own story to a space. Right now, we are using a lot of pillows made from antique verdure tapestry remnants. The nature inspired color palette in the tapestries connects the interior spaces to the landscape..
We’ve been specifying a lot of wallpaper from Sandberg. Their designs feel timeless.
We also love collaborating with Maria Trimbell (@mariatrimbell) to create unique murals and wall finishes that are more personal to our clients’ own story.
Best interior advice you ever received:
We found a lot of great advice for interiors and architecture in the book A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. He explains how to create spaces that appeal to all the human senses.
Best career advice you ever received:
Never take a project just because of money. Always listen to your gut instincts.
Types of home purchases you invest in, and save on:
We invest in antiques. We choose pieces that can have multiple uses so they can move around our home.
Draperies can be very expensive. We prefer simple linen draperies to more extravagant options.
Your greatest extravagance:
Our animals and gardens.
Favorite places to shop for home:
We love going on antique buying trips to Atlanta. They have the best shops including (but not limited to):
Atlanta Antiques Collective, Foxglove Antiques, Jacqueline Adams, Provenance Antiques and Scotts Antique Market.
We also always find wonderful pieces in the antique shops in Tetbury, England.
Most prized possession and why:
Our animal family for the joy and wisdom they bring to our days.
Your interiors motto:
Be Inspired by the Beauty found in Nature
Your life motto:
Design a life you love.
Advice for someone looking to define their own interior style:
When Steve and I were trying to define our style, we gathered samples of all the things we loved in one place:
I included antique textiles, gilt fragments and mirrors, natural linen and vintage velvet pillows. Steve added old leather books, ornamental plaster pieces, an industrial lamp, and his paintings. We wrote down the reasons we were drawn to these elements. This list became our design philosophy and the starting place for our first book, Patina Style.
It was a great exercise, and we highly recommend going through this process for anyone who is trying to figure out their design style.
Take Ten: My Favorite…
Food: We both have a love for pizza :)
Drink:
Brooke: Right now, I’m enjoying Japanese Gin and Fever Tree Tonic
Steve: Dalwhinnie Whiskey
Film:
Steve: Shawshank Redemption
Brooke: Any Nancy Meyer’s movie. I love a good romantic comedy paired with gorgeous interior design.
Hotel: Brooke and Steve: Ett Hem in Stockholm and the Wild Rabbit in the Cotswolds
City: Ojai, California
Bedding: Libeco Linen Satiago bedding in Oyster
Tea or Coffee (and how do you take it): Steve makes us Coffee with a dash of Cinnamon every morning
Playlist: Right now we are listening to a lot of John Mayer. Both his lyrics and melodies really speak to us and our lifestyle.
Weekend Activity: The weekends are our time to rejuvenate and spend with our animals. We have four little shih tzu dogs, and we love starting our days with a long walk with all of them. During the day, we’ll visit our larger animals in the pasture, feeding them extra veggies from our garden and brushing them.
Brooke also enjoys gardening, both in her rose gardens and in her veggie houses, and Steve likes to spend his weekend afternoons painting.
Design Book: Just one? Well… We already recommended A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. Rose Tarlow’s The Private House is filled with great advice and timeless inspiration.
