From Jon de la Cruz’s sixth San Francisco Decorator Showcase contribution — a textured two-part foyer and stair hall — to John K. Anderson’s first — a technicolor penthouse bar and lounge with ’70s soul — the 2025 San Francisco Decorator Showcase, cochaired by Heather Friedland and Katie Taylor, achieved a remarkable degree of cohesion for its spring run this year. That is no small feat for a 9,400-square-foot, eight-bedroom home complete with a garden apartment, two-car garage and 2,000-square-foot roof deck that was listed in April by Neill Bassi of Sotheby’s International Realty for $19.5 million.
“Weeping Woman I,” 2006, by David Bates, from Berggruen Gallery, presides over a vignette of Geoffrey De Sousa Interior Design’s living room for the 2025 San Francisco Decorator Showcase. The fireplace surround and hearth are Fusion Green Quartzite. The Montenegro Table, designed by Mauricio Aguirre, is flanked by a bronze Caste Design chair (left) and 1950s Gastone Rinaldi armchair (right). The antique carpet is from Tony Kitz Gallery, while the drapery fabrics are from JAB Fabrics.
The beloved annual event has connected a community of San Francisco Bay Area interior designers who, in turn, have brought innovation and imagination to new locations since the Decorator Showcase’s 1977 inception. In the years since, the event has raised more than $19 million to support San Francisco University High School’s financial aid program.
For 2935 Pacific Avenue — originally constructed in 1902 in a Tudor Revival style by architect Thomas Paterson Ross and renovated in a Classical style in 2009 by architect Louis Felthouse and designer Matthew MacCaul Turner — 19 design firms reimagined 28 spaces. Whether it was the 35-foot-long chandelier by Boyd Lighting that descends four levels into DLC-ID’s stair hall or the nature-inspired kinship between Katharine Webster’s tranquil garden and Katie Monkhouse’s garden apartment, where lush Dedar fabric hugs the modern curves of a green statement sofa, designers including Kendra Nash, Kathleen Navarra and Ansley Majit of L+P Interiors contributed to the connective thread.
“We really do try to create a flow within the house, and this house is very different than a lot of the others, because the others are a bit more rooted in history,” says Design Advisory Board Chair Geoffrey De Sousa, who has been involved with Showcase for the past three decades — spanning 11 showcases and seven years on the advisory board, serving as chair for the past four. “The thing that I love about this house is the scale,” De Sousa says. “It has a very livable feel.”
For TRG Architecture + Interior Design’s office, Principal Designer Leslie Lamarre wove a powerful bee motif with Graypants hive chandeliers from Archetype Lighting, the Timorous Beasties “Bloody Empire” wallcovering from De Sousa Hughes and a standout creation: the bespoke parametric desk manufactured by Dave Marcoullier Woodworks.
The grand living room De Sousa designed, with two designated areas for repose, is a case in point. On the existing wood-paneled walls, a callback to Tudor origins, De Sousa hung works by the likes of David Bates, Richard Diebenkorn and Sir Isaac Julien, while including a 1958 Aldo Tura bar cabinet and pillows made from Chinese panels that had been gifted to his great-great aunt in the 1930s. The pillows perch on a new pink-toned John Pomp Studios sofa, flanked by deep green Todo Modo chairs from the 1990s that spent time in a viewing gallery in the Louvre.
Just as the room speaks to different decades, it is in conversation with other spaces in the house. “It is funny how there seems to be something that kind of permeates the design community every year that tends to help us coordinate it,” De Sousa says. “There’s a lot of warmer colors and pinks and blues and greens. We all chose some stones that were in similar families. This is a very different stone than Kelly’s in the kitchen,” says De Sousa, pointing to the gray waves in a fireplace surround from Da Vinci Marble. “But I think it really relates very well, which is nice when you’re going through a house, that there’s a thread.” The marine-layered blues woven through Kelly Hohla’s family room and kitchen include a nearly 15-foot marble island with a leather finish, also from Da Vinci.
Among the connections, rapturous standout moments also held court. The parametric desk anchoring Leslie Lamarre’s office space is a bespoke, 3D-modeled creation designed by TRG Architecture + Interior Design and fabricated with 168 plywood pieces that coalesce into a mind-bending shape that functions with a seat, shelf and work surface. “The desk was inspired by dripping honey, so it has that fluid form,” says Whitner Grange of the TRG team. Upstairs in the primary bathroom, Lauren Berry’s “bronze topaz-toned” bathtub floats in the middle of the “vanilla onyx chevron floor” with head-on views of Sutro Tower. In a twist, Sabah Mansoor activated her background in fashion design for her atelier, with hand-embroidered silk panels that evoke pattern paper and murals painted by Caroline Lizarraga based on images from Mansoor’s sketchbooks. “Ultimately, both fashion and interior design are about crafting visual narratives that reflect individual style and story,” Mansoor says.
In the kitchen, Kelly Hohla Interiors utilized “Oceanic” marble stone with a leather finish from Da Vinci Marble, with Willem Racké Studio’s decorative painting camouflaging island and backsplash outlets. The custom cabinetry in “Bridgerton Blue” is by Bakehouse Kitchens. The “Thayer” barstools are from Maiden Home, while the linear chandelier above is by Allied Maker.
And in the dining room, Julie Rootes maintained an existing coffer ceiling and side doors and windows by tenting the room in 200 yards of alpaca fabric and installing John Lyle bronze chairs, French antiques from the 1700s and a Paul Ferrante light fixture inspired by Bo Derek’s headpiece in 10. “I wanted it to feel very layered and collected over time, that it was a family that lived here,” says Rootes. “Kind of Park Avenue meets Marrakesh vibes.”
“Why do we do this all?” Decorator Showcase Executive Director Stephanie Yee reflects on the six-month Showcase sprint, from inviting proposals and reviewing submissions to commencing construction, spearheaded by Greg Cook of Cook Construction, and supervising finishing touches until hours before the press preview. “We of course do it because we love delighting all the visitors,” Yee says of the more than 16,000 people who typically visit during the month-long viewing period. “We do it because we love bringing together the community and the patrons. We also do it because the school is so committed to financial aid. We gave over $5.4 million in scholarship last year that went to 23 percent of the student body — and Decorator Showcase really plays a big role in that.”
