Home Tour: Mark D. Sikes in the Hollywood Hills

Mark D. Sikes has dedicated his life to making things beautiful. From his popular blog, to his interior design business, to his new line of women's sportswear, Sikes approaches his art forms with an inherently classic touch. Back in 2012, he and his partner Michael Griffin welcomed the Lonny team into their home in the Hollywood Hills, where potted topiaries, chinoiserie wallpaper, and blue-and-white china create an oasis of timeless beauty. Every vignette and sitting area is an effortless collection of the things and styles they love most. Read on to find out which icons inspire Sikes's aesthetic and see some of our favorite spaces that are just begging to be pinned.

At left, Sikes, Griffin and their French bulldog, Lily, amid the topiary-lined brick steps of their lush garden. At right, the front door of the couple's 1920s, Spanish-influenced home exudes romantic Mediterranean style. 

"Throughout all my projects," says Mark D. Sikes, "I work to make the new feel old, to add layers of patina and age." The designer's appreciation for classic all-American good taste is on abundant display throughout the 1920s  home in the Hollywood Hills that he shares with his partner, Michael Griffin. 

In Sikes's expansive foyer, glass vases filled with paperwhites and eucalpytus leaves adorn an antique Asian-style table paired with a tabouret chèvre. 

In the brief two-and-a-half years they've lived there Sikes has managed to fashion the kind of cultivated interior that seems to have developed over generations. "It doesn't feel like a 'decorated' house," he says. It's very organic and open. In fact, that's the first change I made to the house after we bought it. I had all the doors rehung to open out." The indoor-outdoor lifestyle is indicative of Southern California, but it also suggests the homes of two of Sikes's role models, Oscar de la Renta and Bunny Williams. "Their homes in the Dominican Republic have made a huge impression on my sense of style," he says.

A powder-blue chinoiserie wallpaper envelopes the home's formal dining room, where tan-and-white gingham-upholstered chairs surround a linen-covered dining table. 

Like Sikes's Mediterranean-style home, de la Renta's and Williams's island residences boast an easygoing grace that appears utterly uncontemplated but is, in reality, created through the application of great talent and care. This type of aesthetic steeliness—the refusal to deviate from an assiduously developed style statement—is a recurring theme of Sikes's popular blog Chic People, Glamorous Places, Stylish Things, where he frequently celebrates those designers and artists, such as Katharine Hepburn and Carolina Herrera, who've stuck to their guns. 

In the sun-filled kitchen, neutral striped rugs cover the light wood floors around a sizable kitchen island and cozy seating nook. 

Near the ornate fireplace, a rattan chair is punctuated with a leopard-print throw pillow and a classic blue-and-white garden stool. A thick sisal floor covering is layered with an accent rug in black-and-white zebra.

The master suite boasts a slim, yet statement-making canopy bed draped in serene, soft blue fabric panels. An intimate seating area is nestled at the foot of the bed. 

From the master suite, a petite, wrought-iron terrace overlooks the home's Italian-style garden.

The bathroom's unconventional fittings—including a camel-colored shower curtain, vintage rattan tripod table, and dark painted walls—transform a functional space into a design-driven focal point.

To see more of Mark D. Sikes and Michael Griffin's classic home—including how they decorate for the holidays—visit this feature in the Lonny archives.

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