Shining brightly on the Cape Town coast, you’ll find a home so richly beautiful and captivating in appearance that it ascends to the bracket of the utterly unforgettable. The mastermind behind the home, John Jacob, of John Jacob Interiors, has earned a time-tested reputation as one of the industry’s most beloved and eclectic names. Each of his projects is completely unique, even amongst his own catalogue. Yet through all of that, there’s a clear creative throughline that ensures the consistent, well-developed style his clients have come to know him for, and this Cape Town home is no exception.
Inspired by the glamorous style of the Hollywood Regency in the 1930s, the home boasts Jacob’s typically bold and striking use of colour in ways that are effortlessly fun and vibrant without ever playing into design clichés. Where most coastal homes feel breezy and casual, this home instead offers up opulence and style in equal measure, making heavy use of lacquer, chrome, and antique mirrors throughout the property. And yet, as distinct as the design feels, it still provides a chic tropical vibe that coheres with the regency style in a fascinating way, with its use of effervescent colour, bamboo motifs, and palm prints.
Jacob has used a vibrant spectrum of colour to energise and uplift the home’s aesthetic, with each room serving as a series of interconnected communal spaces that shift dramatically from Chinese lacquer red to elegant greys. It all sounds so delightfully mad at times, something Jacob is fully aware of, yet it is neatly reined in and held together beautifully by clever usage of repeating elements throughout the home.
A maximalist masterpiece that clearly understands when too much is exactly that, there are few homes that blend so many ideas in such a beautifully cohesive way as this.
