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This Must Be the Place: Homes with Atmosphere is a new monograph by Chloe Redmond Warner, founder and principal at Redmond Aldrich Design, showcasing twelve projects by her firm that positively ooze ambiance. It’s a book worth reading, too—don’t miss Warner’s tender, reflective, yet razor-sharp introduction; the jokes she pops into pull-quotes; or the musicians she recommends listening to while you take in each house. Featured below is one of the projects from the book, shared exclusively with Domino readers, which Warner suggests exploring with a little Bon Iver or Phoebe Bridgers—”songs that might seem mopey at first until you remember the truism ‘happiness is a sad song'”—playing in the background.
The house is nestled in charming Mill Valley, a town north of San Francisco famous for its bohemian aesthetic and spectacular nature. The lot here has a stream in the backyard and towering redwoods shading parts of the yard, a truly magical setting that sold the property for our clients, a sparkly young family who presented us with the sparkliest of briefs.
We started with an intention to make a farmhouse feel like a French fashion editor’s cottage in the forest. Holy smokes! What does that even mean? And also: LFG!* We decided that it meant we were going to participate in the design of our era and invest in living artists and craftspeople. It meant we wanted to make it feel unique and like when you opened the door you had entered an alternative universe of woodsy high glamour. And it meant making it a little French: crisp, very poised, timeless, fizzy, witty, pretty, and confident.
Our challenge was to meet the enthusiasm for this exact moment with the right things from the past, to include and reference the forest, and figure out how to make them all work together and not end up like a 2020s aesthetic bubble burst all over a sleepy hippie neighborhood. Our strategy was to use almost every color in the dusky rainbow, vintage patterns, references from the seventies and eighties, and strong, clean graphic forms.
Readers who have a passion for the new—as everyone in our office does—would be wise to pair pieces from today with antiques, the better to help a room feel undatable and timeless. The magic of combining furniture is on full display here, and it has to do with finding a friendly tension. Pairing something puffy with something bony, or something crisp with something more ornamental, for instance, makes sure neither piece is stealing the show.
Summing up this project, and this book, it dawned on me that some projects call for restraint, others call for bravery. Most, for us, call for bravery. We pushed the rooms here beyond having just a single identity, pushed them so they wouldn’t be one-note and aimed for an atmosphere that would feel fresh for a long time. There’s usually a moment where everyone is afraid that it’s going to look bonkers, but one must power through this to the other side, which is chic nonchalance that can evolve with your life.
*The slender overlap of my readers and Tom Brady fans will already know this refers to “Let’s f*cking go,” but now we’re all in on it—go forth and impress the sports fans in your life!
Tour the House
Excerpt from the new book This Must Be The Place (Abrams) by Chloe Redmond Warner. © 2026 Chloe Redmond Warner.