Palos Verdes House

Exterior decorative painting is a different discipline from interior work. The light is four or five times brighter, it moves through a full arc during the day, and it is coming off the ocean. Colour relationships that are perfectly judged in a studio go chalky and dissolve within an hour of being installed outdoors.

The loggia scheme is therefore built on warm ochres, sage and terracotta with the values pushed further apart than an interior would need. The banding around each vault is deliberately stronger than it looks at close range; at the distance the loggia is actually seen from — the garden, not the soffit — it is what keeps the ornament from washing out.

The vaults are treated as a repeating architectural system rather than a picture. Each bay carries a medallion at the crown, a run of ornament along the groin, and a cartouche on the wall face; the cartouches are lettered by hand and vary from bay to bay, so the arcade has rhythm without becoming wallpaper.

Materials were specified for exposure rather than for the studio. Everything on this ceiling is subject to marine air, UV and thermal movement, which rules out most of the finishes that would be perfectly appropriate ten feet inside the same house.