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My Favorite Room: Tamara Taylor takes advantage of connections

"There’s so much light and it’s so open," actress Taylor says of the great room of her Sherman Oaks home.
“There’s so much light and it’s so open,” actress Taylor says of the great room of her Sherman Oaks home.
(Jenna Schoenefeld / For The Times)
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Actress Tamara Taylor’s light-filled Sherman Oaks home was no bright spot when she purchased it in 2010.

With the exception of an open-air courtyard, the 2,000-square-foot midcentury-modern was gloomy, filled with wall-to-wall carpeting, and all of the windows were covered.

The “Bones” star, who was painfully shy as a child and started acting to overcome her fears, said restoring the home’s airy feel was central to its transformation.

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“I took out all the window treatments, ripped up the carpeting, busted out all the walls and returned it to its original splendor,” Taylor, 46, said. “For a claustrophobic like myself, it’s really nice. It’s like a greenhouse.”

Although the plant-filled breezeway is a close second, Taylor said her favorite room is a great room that features living, kitchen and dining areas and a coffee corner for meditation and reading.

What makes this room special?

There’s so much light and it’s so open that from any corner or any seat in any space in the room you can see clear across to the other side. And it’s completely conducive for socializing because everything is connected.

You enlisted the help of a friend, Los Angeles designer Carter Bradley, to help restyle the space.

She was crucial in terms of returning the place to its midcentury yumminess. Getting the right color for the poured concrete floors, deciding what kind of lighting to go for and placing the track lighting. She was the visionary behind all of that.

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Yummiest design detail?

The poured concrete floors. It looked like a mirrored surface at first, and I like the fact that it’s getting scuffed and aged.

Design philosophy?

I have a couple. If you like it, it will go together. Furniture should always be comfortable. And always have a piece of art that you made somewhere in the home.

Where is the art you created?

On the back kitchen wall. There is this huge print of a picture I took of my favorite place at the beach. I blew it up beyond all recognition and then just put the word ‘love’ on it.

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What’s with the giant “Yes” sign in the breezeway?

I have a theory that people are either born “yeses” or “nos.” I’m probably a born “no,” and that “yes” is a nice big reminder every day for me to lean into “yes.”

You have a disco ball and a mannequin torso in the room. Why?

Why not? Design should never take itself too seriously. The disco ball is my symbol of this philosophy. It’s my piece of whimsy. The torso is the same thing. It’s like, “Hey, there she is, a mannequin torso. Why? We don’t know.”

What three things would you grab from the room in an emergency?

I have four animals (two dogs and two cats), so I would have to consolidate them into one bundle on my way out. I would grab the disco ball, of course, and my favorite Borsalino hat that I commandeered from my boyfriend. I would look like a lunatic. I would be a woman in a man’s hat, carrying a diabetic cat, three other animals and a disco ball. But have disco ball will travel.

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hotproperty@latimes.com

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