Given the utopian origins of Sea Ranch—a 1960s modernist enclave on the farthest reaches of California’s Sonoma Coast, conceived as a nature-driven rebuke to the era’s political crosscurrents—it’s little surprise that Clara Jung and her husband, Sam Zun, found their own countercultural path there. For more than a decade, the Bay Area lawyers escaped to Sea Ranch rentals each New Year, a head-clearing ritual through fertility struggles, the surrogacy journeys that brought their two children into the world, and Jung’s pivot from corporate law to interior design. “None of this is how I imagined,” says Jung, who founded AD PRO Directory firm Banner Day Interiors in 2014. “But I’ve never been afraid to do things differently.”
Through it all, Jung and Zun returned to that 10-mile stretch of bluff where coastal gales sculpt Monterey cypress into windscreens that inspired Sea Ranch’s signature sloped roofs. Buying a home in the community was just as unorthodox: a co-ownership pact—sealed over wine in a Paris speakeasy in 2021—with another Bay Area couple, Jung’s former design clients. “For how many lawyers are involved—three of us have JDs—it’s surprisingly informal,” Jung says. “It really just comes down to friendship and trust.” A shared Google Calendar helps, keeping dates straight for each family’s respective stays.
The 1972 house by architect Kent Linn builds on ideas from Sea Ranch’s founding designers—also partners at the short-lived Berkeley architecture firm MLTW—who defined the community’s vernacular with redwood cladding, geometric forms, and sloped roofs. Set on the east side of Highway 1, Linn’s interpretation feels attuned to its forested site, where a dense canopy of redwood and pine made an extensive skylight system essential. Glass on nearly every exterior plane—no matter height or slope—draws in patterns of leaves and light, shadow and sway. “A friend once said the house felt too dark,” says Jung, who completed a yearlong renovation in the summer of 2024. “But I love the mood it brings.” Beyond nuance or texture, the dappling also provides a serene sense of place.
Most of the original redwood paneling was left untouched, save for one brief blip in the kitchen, where Jung washed the millwork in a translucent blue stain that lets the grain show through, bringing contrast without breaking continuity. Though Sea Ranch architecture intentionally recedes into the landscape—redwood siding silvers in the elements, while generous windows dissolve the boundary between shelter and sea—punchy color has always been part of its DNA, especially in communal spaces like the Sea Ranch Lodge and Moonraker Recreation Center, where the late designer Barbara Stauffacher Solomon emblazoned her famous supergraphics.
An oceanic ombré of Heath tile ripples through the primary bath (née photo darkroom), while the bunk room’s vermillion double-decker bed recalls Northern California’s grandest span, the Golden Gate Bridge. Jewel tones gleam in the living room: a vintage carnelian-colored chair here, an amethyst-hued ottoman by AD100 firm Nickey Kehoe there, a Pierce and Ward (also AD100) pillow in peridot velvet tossed in for good measure—the spectrum feels symphonic but slightly offbeat. For years, Jung has collected castaway color combinations she could never quite convince clients to try. “This living room is basically an island of broken color dreams,” says the designer, who displays even more chromatic daring in her first book, Storied Homes: Designs From Banner Day Interiors, out this spring.
Sweeping gestures of stewardship, like maintaining the home’s original silhouette and materiality, shouldn’t eclipse the dozens of small, almost invisible acts: letting lichen thrive on the original stone fireplace, for instance, or simply reversing the cozy primary bedroom’s door swing to fit a larger bed. Even the cellar went unscathed, its 400-plus bottles included in the sale—a tribute to the wine-fueled pact the homeowners made in Paris. The self-proclaimed Sea Ranch Wine Club’s idea of a good time is playing roulette with vintages—Jung says their odds of finding a well-aged winner haven’t exceeded 50-50.
In the kitchen and entry, the designer translated the cellar’s cylindrical terra-cotta bottle holders into a concrete floor pattern with a natural patchiness that mirrors the forest’s shifting light—a reminder that the house moves in rhythm with the world around it.
“Everywhere you look, you see nature reflected back,” says Jung. “That constant play between outside and in is what makes this place so special.”
