LA revival.

Longtime friends Joëlle Kütner and Jesse Rudolph founded Ome Dezin in 2020 as a design-build studio that restores character driven homes of Los Angeles.


Kütner and Rudolph find inspiration in the city’s many architectural styles, including Mid-Century, Art Deco, Spanish, Craftsman and Tudor, and aim to preserve these codes, while imbuing each restoration with thoughtful design and contemporary live-ability.


Ome Dezin’s design direction is grounded in natural colors and materials, creating a unique character with timeless appeal.

Photo: Sterling Reed

Photo: Austin Leis

We chatted with the team on their process, materiality, and the use of natural materials in their projects.

Tell us about what you do.

We are design build, so the majority of our projects are actually our own projects that we own from beginning to end, and we have investors and other partners that work with us on it. But when we're designing we don't have a specific client in mind, so we design a home to what we think the home would reach its full potential, but also to the neighborhood and community within Los Angeles. LA is sprawling and every neighborhood has it's own vibe and niche. Really, the soul and character and interesting architecture is within its residential properties.

So that's what sort of interested us In the beginning was restoring homes.

How does being design build affect design decisions?

Jesse: We can really design, we have initial ideas and obvious direction based on the style of the home that creates initial parameters.Then from there really progressing on a priority basis. And then we are figuring out what we need to as we go. Allowing there to be space for iterations and progression as we move through a project. 

So with lighting, sometimes we know a lighting piece needs to be really special. We will start looking at that and we design a space around a specific light. Other times we get the pieces in place and then we will start to finesse it. Place lighting and figure out where things look best. 

Photo: Austin Leis

And do the houses already have a certain materiality template that you're honing in on? 

Joëlle: There's definitely always at least some influence, but it might be the littlest thing. It could be small. It’s usually that 100% of their materials are changed out just because of the aging of things.

But for instance, we have this mid-century home in Brentwood. It has this exterior flooring material on the patios, it’s cement with pebbles placed in it, like black smooth river rocks. So we would like to replicate it, so we are trying to figure out how to do it. So for that example we like to keep and then build upon and then that will influence the materials that we choose inside, even just a small element. 

Jesse: And sometimes the style brings with it a world of materiality that then we stick with. Like we worked on a Spanish that had to go through a complete transformation because it was built in 1980. So it was just bad all around. Everything was just removed, like every single material was removed and replaced except for the foundation. So there weren't any specific materials that we were given, however, the style dictated then certain materials that were in the world of the Spanish style.

Photo: Sterling Reed

Joëlle: I mean, there's a lot of wood in this project. Our design ethos is rooted in natural materials. We are trying to build and design homes that are going to feel and look great as long as possible. Whether that’s 10, 20,100 years. So natural materials are such a foundation for us because what is more classic than nature? And things that you can find in nature, that's not going to go out of style. 

Photo: Tessa Neustadt

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