An Artful Neon Spectacular in This Black L.A. Home

Although it’s a qualifier many strive for, a one-of-a-kind home is rather difficult to find. Design is often derivative, and trends, as much as we like to think we’re ignoring them, are unavoidably influential. Originality doesn’t come easy. With that understanding, it feels safe to characterize curator and investor Beth Redmond’s house in West Hollywood as distinctive. Much of what fills it—trippy Ivan Navarro neons, textural Campana Brothers sofas, Gregory Siff’s explosions of color, and sculptural Chris Schanck seating—is simply not replicable.

Indeed, Redmond has created her own fantasy. Moving back to her native L.A. after several years in New York City, where she lived in the Greenwich Hotel, she first settled into a smaller house with “killer views” in the hills before realizing she craved something that felt more like a home. What she found, off the market—owned by a fellow art collector who hardly lived in it—was “an architecturally better house for the stuff I have inside.”

Its interior wall space aside, the big-time curator was seriously drawn to its shell, too. “It’s black: I mean, that’s like a dream for me. I’m a very untraditional person, and I definitely like to make a statement,” says Redmond. Chic, modern, and rock-and-roll are how she describes it, laughing about a Wall Street Journal article that called black exteriors the new white picket fence. Redmond says she didn’t choose the achromatic exterior to be trendy, and in fact makes zero effort to conform to fads in fashion, art, or interior design. "I don’t listen to what anyone says," she says. "I don’t care who the art world says is expensive; art is not a business to me.”

Redmond’s vast collection of neon art pops better against a dark backdrop than it did on her previous light, airy home. Her red Navarro ladder, for example, glows fire-engine red as it clings to the side of the house, while his yellow bench and Tracey Emin’s lime-neon text stand out in the backyard, their reflections dancing on the pool’s surface.

“It’s all my vision and my creation, which I think is really important, because there’s nobody else who can come put this together and create my home,” she says. “Then it’d be their home.” Redmond freely admits she doesn’t agonize over purchases or meticulously plan rooms. Instead, “I just put things together,” she says. “There’s not a rhyme or reason for a lot of things. I am very decisive; I know exactly when I see something if I want it or have a vision for it.”

The house was easily adapted to Redmond’s use. She closed up some windows to create more wall space for hanging art, had extensive recessed gallery lighting installed in ceilings, and built a wall for Emin’s neon by the pool. Under Redmond’s purview, the kitchen is as much a gallery as the rest of the home, featuring her favorite blue telephone-booth sculpture artist Daniel Arsham made her, alongside objects—patent leather stiletto Saint Laurent roller-skate boots, neon books, Lucy Sparrow felted candy boxes, and David LaChapelle and Tom Ford tomes—in lieu of your standard KitchenAid mixer and Nespresso machine. In her house, playfulness rules, and it’s fueled by plenty of Willy Wonka–worthy seating and a kaleidoscopic array of art—beaded, painted, neon, drawn.

One of the artists responsible is artist Gregory Siff, one of Redmond’s best friends. She credits him with making her art collection what it is today. His large Technicolor canvas hangs above a pink plush-toy KAWS and a Campana Brothers sofa (of which only eight were made) in perhaps the most playful part of her house, alongside an arcade sourced at Maxfield, a custom neon pool table she found in Paris, and a Chris Schanck purple glitter chair. “All these artists ended up becoming my good friends—I go very deep when I start collecting someone,” she says.

Many of her furnishings are custom. Countless acrylic tables and consoles throughout are by friend Alexandra von Furstenberg—they complement her aesthetic perfectly. “I’ve always liked to be surrounded by beautiful things, by cool things,” says Redmond. “I like things that are different. No one else has this shit—it’s pretty sick.” In the midst of it all she feels inspired, and loves exposing her artist friends to new audiences. “It’s creative stimulation,” she adds. “It makes me so happy to have a kind of fantasy for people to see.”