A San Francisco basement apartment packed with English country charm

On the outer edges of San Francisco's Sunset district, minutes from Ocean Beach, there once was a dark and wonky basement, holding captive decades worth of dust flecks and storage boxes. Today, the space is completely transformed; a place that  owners Jessica and Stig Olson “can't move from now” because, well, they “just love it too much”. And who to thank for this bottom-floor overhaul? A friend to the couple, designer Hana Mattingly, founder and principal designer of Innen Studio.

Hana and Jessica, chatting in the kitchen.

Before coming to Hana, Jessica and Stig – San Francisco residents since their university years – had worked hard to transform their first home into one that was joyful and accommodating for their growing family. “Jess has a great eye for design,” says Hana, “so the upper part of the house was really nice and well-curated." The basement, however, was a different story; “It was completely unfinished," says Hana, “no finished wall treatments, exposed beams, joints, wires and plumbing.” When Hana first set foot in the space, it was “very dark” and ultimately “unliveable”. Nevertheless, Hana and her clients saw “a lot of potential”: with its substantial ceiling height, the basement was a bit of a unicorn in the realm of typical San Franciscan houses. “We immediately knew we could have this work in our favour,” says Hana, adding, laughingly, “but we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us”.

To begin, Hana called upon her friend, architect Jack Hotho, to “tackle the less glamorous aspects of the design”, which involved moving the house's HVAC system from the centre of the room to a inconspicuous closet, adding insulation with drywall to drown out noise pollution ("you could hear everything upstairs," says Hana) and, most difficult of all, “figure out how to level out the seriously sloped floors and still maintain a still-liveable ceiling height”. Hana and Jack also consulted with a structural engineer to properly detail the space to ensure it was “totally safe”, ultimately adding in large bi-fold glass doors to let in heaps of sunlight, as well as create an “indoor/outdoor feel”. This is Hana's “favourite detail" in the basement – “on a nice day,” she notes, “you feel like you're outside when you're indoors… it is just the cutest thing.

The basement's living area is filled with light and features a calming colour palette. The sectional is from Timothy Oulten; the lighting was mostly “just found”, save for the three-armed light and two sconces by Los Angeles-based brass-worker Ramsey Conder. Like most of the other gold or brass vintage mirrors in the space, the mirror comes from Jess' personal collection.

Bess Friday

After sorting through the nitty gritty structural details, Hana could get to work with the design – along with Jess and Stig, of course. “It was so fun working with friends,” Hana reflects. “It was very different from my typical approach to design… this process was so much more casual. I feel like we became closer, too”. Together, Hana worked with Jess and Stig to bang out the details for the basement's redesign, discussing inspiration and ideas over long, joyful dinners (“I felt like I almost moved in with them for a brief moment,” she laughs). It was helpful, too, that the couple had a “clear idea” on what the basement should be: “an entertaining space, a place for out of town family members to stay, a place for workshops”. Jess “loves florals” and is an aspiring midwife, so room for her passions was necessary. For the couple's five-year-old son, they knew they needed a “movie den and a kid zone for future sleepovers and playdates”.