The designer brings her fiercely glamorous approach—high-octane patterns, gleaming metallic surfaces, and spirited colors—to a family home in California

To hire Los Angeles designer Kelly Wearstler is to buy into her singularly bedazzling, high-chroma style. It’s an identity that extends across her interiors, furnishing collections, lines of apparel and accessories, books, and television appearances—for which she always dresses to impress. “What we’re really creating,” she asserts, clad in a Carven silk blouse and a mineral-washed skirt from her eponymous clothing label, “is the world of . . . ” The world, that is, of Kelly Wearstler.For an example of classic Wearstler synergy, take the story of how selling her own home helped land her a major client. A few years ago, when she and her husband, hotelier Brad Korzen, put their modern but maximally appointed Harold W. Levitt–designed Beverly Hills house—the subject of Wearstler’s 2006 monograph, Domicilium Decoratus—on the market, the prospective buyers included a Los Angeles real-estate developer and his wife. The couple ultimately decided the house wasn’t for them, but when they did find a suitable residence, a 1939 Georgian Revival overlooking the manicured links of the Bel-Air Country Club, they called upon Wearstler to help them breathe new life into the place. “We knew from Kelly’s house and her books that we’d end up with something totally unique,” recounts the husband. “I mean, just look at that sofa,” he adds, indicating a dramatic piece upholstered in frisky magenta tiger-striped velvet.

While the owners acknowledge that going with Wearstler’s daredevil approach “required a leap of faith,” they probably had not counted on taking their new house down to the studs. In the interest of giving the home a “modern and spirited voice,” as the designer puts it, she teamed with M. Brian Tichenor of Tichenor & Thorp Architects to gut the three-story structure, add 3,000 square feet of living space, and fashion it all in a manner Tichenor has dubbed “contemporized Georgian.” Together Wearstler and Tichenor pushed up the ceiling, window, and door heights, restyled the staid entry hall as a theatrical rotunda with a kaleidoscopic marble floor, expanded the kitchen, and carved out a new master suite upstairs. In the basement they built a media room, a library, an art studio, and a playroom. Outside, they installed a new swimming pool and a groovy-chic pool pavilion, complete with a wall of mirrored cabinets, bold herringbone floors, and sinuous black leather sofas.

Though Wearstler is often associated with the revamped Hollywood Regency style she brought to her husband’s hotels, she has lately moved beyond that aesthetic, focusing more on graphic floor patterns (executed in marble, wood, or carpeting), heavy metal detailing (brass, bronze, chrome), and sexy French and Italian furniture from the late 20th century, which she mixes with her own heroically scaled designs and the occasional classical piece. For the Bel Air project she had to adapt her palette to the clients’ divergent sensibilities: “He wanted something comfortable and kind of muted, and she wanted something a little more feisty,” Wearstler says. The family room, without question, has feistiness to burn. In addition to the magenta sofa, the space features an imposing pink-and-black-parchment TV cabinet with brass accents, a prismatic rug inspired by one of Wearstler’s mother’s scarves, and walls paneled with a repeating pyramid motif. By comparison, the living room is positively subdued, its sculptural brass light fixtures casting a warm glow on walls clad in honey-color porcelainized canvas, while Italian modernist chairs anchor a geometric-patterned rug in quiet tones. Staking out the middle ground is the dining room, where walls of antiqued mirror and metal-leafed vinyl, a black-lacquer table by Howard Werner, and bronze Paul Evans chairs upholstered in cowhide with metallic-gold flecks give off a seductive, decadent vibe.

Upstairs, a former guest room was appropriated to create a high-glam master suite. The bed, whose voluptuous curves were based on a fireplace design Wearstler admired, was custom made of hand-burnished brass and required the efforts of six workers and the advice of a structural engineer for installation. A vestibule with an exaggerated tray ceiling leads to unapologetically lavish his-and-her baths, both with marble-and-onyx walls and boldly patterned marble floors, bespoke parchment-and-brass vanities, and dressing rooms the size of small apartments. “We’re doing a lot of these closets as hangout rooms now,” notes Wearstler. “You can have your friends over, talk on the phone, use the computer, go shopping—all in your closet.”

The only predictable element in the bedroom of the homeowners’ teenage daughter is the touch of pink she wanted—it’s there in the form of an armchair and ottoman upholstered in folds of fuchsia leather. They sit next to her chrome Paul Evans four-poster, which reflects a vintage Murano-glass ceiling light and the confetti-like design of a bespoke wall covering. Her little brother also requested certain details in his room—pale-blue walls, a Sputnik chandelier, geometric artwork vaguely reminiscent of his Lego constructions—and helped select the table and TV cabinet in the playroom downstairs. “I love the yellow rug in that room,” reports the boy, who sums up the makeover of his family’s house as “happy and fun.” Only as it should be in the wonderful world of Wearstler.