Local interior designer earns national recognition
Local interior designer Eliana de Leon
Eliana de Leon awarded for work at new Geneseo Inn
–Eliana de Leon, an interior designer based in Paso Robles, recently won the 2021 Metal Architecture Design Award in the Interiors Category; the judges reviewed her work done at the Geneseo Inn, a bed and breakfast located at Cass Winery’s vineyard.
“It was a successful collaboration between Alice and Steve Cass, Ted Plemons [the owners] and me,” de Leon said. “It was energizing to present atypical ideas and materials to clients that were on board with ‘designing outside the box’. As soon as I heard from Ted that future guests would be staying in actual freight containers positioned within the vines, I knew I had to come up with unique ideas to mesh with their vision and help create an extraordinary experience. We agreed that the interiors needed to be ‘edgy’ to match this special concept,” she said.
Geneseo Inn, which was completed in June 2020, was built using recycled industrial shipping containers and this clean-lined, urban aesthetic was further developed through the interior design. Each of the eight units has a different theme inspired by a song. For the ‘Country Roads’ room, de Leon described that “we had a custom headboard fabricated from Cass Wine staves and installed ceramic planks on shower walls that look like colorful faded barn wood that exude old time travels”. For the ‘Gaia’ room, the aim was to use sustainable materials to create a calming environment, including “a special Tansu floor tile that is rumored to have healing properties”. For the ‘Ebony & Ivory’ room, the use of “glossy black tiles juxtaposed with larger white matte tiles that create a startlingly beautiful contrast” in the shower, as well as other black and white accents in the room, were utilized to signify piano keys, as the owners are sponsors of the Paderewski Festival.
“I moved to Paso Robles after a career in Los Angeles designing exciting projects like Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles and Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. But this venture was the most stimulating. It gave me a chance to pull from my 30 years of design experience and help clients create a truly exclusive place in Paso Robles for tourists and locals to enjoy,” de Leon said.
For more information regarding the award and de Leon’s work, visit the Metal Architecture Magazine’s website and her website.
