The Whole Home as a Haven of Comfort

If ever a design enjoys longevity, it is by dint of comfort. So much so, that as far as Rose Tarlow is concerned, comfort is the key ingredient in design. Tarlow should know. She has been a professional interior designer for 25 years, having begun her career in Los Angeles in 1976. Since then, she has been on what she calls “a search for quality.”

Tarlow has always loved furniture and antiques and said occasionally she’ll do some design work for a client just so she can buy antiques for someone. She also designs and manufactures furniture, fabric and wallpaper at her showroom, the Rose Tarlow-Melrose House on Melrose Place. The door to her own home--as well as others she’s done--is ajar, thanks to a picture-packed book on design that she spent eight months writing. “The Private House” (Clarkson Potter, $37.50), her first book, is due out in mid-November. Tarlow says the book covers essential elements of design, including the emotional elements. “I think my life is about a preoccupation with beauty and quality.” Comfort, too, of course. She said that even as a child, “I needed to live in a certain kind of space for my comfort. I was intensely aware of my surroundings very early. As a little girl, I needed my room to be a special way.”

As for her own home in L.A., Tarlow sees to it that every room in the house contains a place to relax, maybe even linger. One of the most common mistakes in designing a home, Tarlow believes, is the tendency to focus on the bedrooms as the only place to relax. “Every room in my house has a place where I can sit and be comfortable to paint or read or write,” Tarlow said. “Every room, even the kitchen, where I have two chairs by the fireplace. One is a very old wing chair, 18th century, with original fabric, so it is worn and cozy and has a tremendous amount of personality. Next to it is an all-wood French 17th century with a little arm table attached so I can write if I want to. Even my dressing room has a place to sit so I can read.”

Tarlow said she wrote the book to explain how she goes about designing, minus any finger-wagging. “I didn’t want to tell people what to do. I wanted to say what I felt. I wanted something more meditative. I didn’t want it to be dictatorial. Mostly I didn’t want to tell people this is wrong or this is right. I don’t believe in that. It is nobody’s place to do that. I really mean it.”

Tarlow suggested that given all that is going on, maybe we will begin--if we haven’t done so already--to see our homes in a different way, “make them more like a nest or more comfortable.”

*

Candace A. Wedlan is at candace.wedlan@latimes.com.