Design Within Reach just turned this iconic Palm Desert house into a shoppable vacation home

Underneath the slopes of the San Jacinto Mountains of Palm Desert, California, stands a house that looks right out of the pages of a magazine. With its distinctive rolling roof and mid-century modern design, the historic Miles C. Bates “Wave House” holds a coveted spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

And now, thanks to a collaboration between modern furniture-and-design company Design Within Reach (DWR) and vacation rental company, Boutique, the Wave House is beautifully furnished and open to the public for rentals.

DWR chose to outfit the house with pieces from its Paul Smith Collection, a collaboration with the British luxury fashion designer releasing the same day as the house booking. True to Smith’s design philosophy of “classic with a twist,” the collection reimagines a selection of iconic Knoll, Herman Miller, and DWR furniture with colorful new textiles. From the Eames Molded Plastic Side Chair refreshed with a seat cushion fashioned in lime green polka dots to Eero Saarinen’s Womb Chair cheerfully covered in vertical stripes, the collection aims to strike a balance between modernity and tradition.

The collaboration provides an opportunity for DWR to explore new ways to introduce their collections to audiences. Debbie Propst, President of Global Retail at DWR’s parent company MillerKnoll, notes that this is an exciting opportunity to allow people to live with DWR pieces in real life and interact with them outside of a store.

This experiential marketing philosophy isn’t new. The “shoppable” hotel room phenomena has been rising in popularity as a way to entice guests to bring a piece of their vacation back home with them. Guests at the Wave House can purchase everything from side chairs to the bed frame. All of the pieces in the collection are available through DWR’s website and at their new Palm Springs location, opened just this February.

When planning the furnishings for the house, Omar Nobil, Senior Vice President Creative Director at DWR says that the company’s goal was to embody the spirit of the property and create a transportive experience for guests.

“The striking architecture is a perfect home to the collection which honors form and function through bold applications of pattern, color, and scale,” says Nobil. “Great interior design has the power to move and inspire people when every detail, large or small, has been considered with the purpose of creating a particular, transportive experience.”

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