Amber Lewis’s New Book Calls Carmel Home

Named after Lewis’s Instagram hashtag for the project, “Client: Never Leaving’ ‘Cause the Views Are so Freakin’ Pleasin’” is actually two dreamy beachfront homes built from the ground up for a quickly growing, multi-generational family. Situated on the bluffs of Carmel, each home offers jaw-dropping views—there’s the Boardwalk House, overlooking the world famous Pebble Beach Golf Links, and the Beach House, which stuns with its 180-degree water views—and beautifully showcases Lewis’s belief that “our surroundings should influence how we design our homes.” Working closely with the architects to incorporate each design element into Carmel’s breathtaking landscape, Lewis utilized earthy colors and textural materials, carefully avoiding beachy cliches and instead deconstructing the idea with sand-matched neutrals and soft furnishings to balance the homes’ steel, glass and stone constructs. The resulting juxtaposition perfectly captures—and never competes with—the location’s natural surroundings.  

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From the soaring white oak ceilings to the warm plaster walls, vintage Pierre Jeanneret cane dining chairs to the show-stopping Nero Marquina black marble bathtub that had to be hoisted in with a crane, Lewis describes every design decision in detail. Down to perhaps the most quintessentially Carmel feature: Motorized drapery on the Boardwalk House’s movable steel-and-glass walls to prevent golfers on the eleventh hole of Pebble Beach from seeing in. 

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Because sometimes everyone needs a little privacy, even when the views are this freakin’ pleasin’. 

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