Rock House Design

We hired Rock House Design to transform our kids' (now in college) play room into a home office and "music appreciation room" for our vintage stereo equipment and vinyl collection. Lauren and her team were a pleasure to work with, and their design aesthetic was flawless. We love our new room, and we are really enjoying listening to all of our old (and new) records in such a cool space!

Lauren created a kitchen for us that fits our unique style perfectly; it feels right for the rest of our traditional home and yet updates us to a more modern aesthetic. This was no small task because we have very eclectic style developed from over 40 years of international travel and roots in New Orleans. This has challenged other Northern California designers who want to herd us into the popular greige wine country style that would orphan our more eclectic style. Lauren listened to us and respectfully integrated our beloved heirlooms, antiques, art and treasures instead of pushing us to replace them. Her design firm is professional, skillful, cost conscious, mindful of her clients individual style, and brings the project together beautifully. We LOVE our new kitchen and interviewed a number of designers that could not have gotten us here. Lauren and her team are delightful to work with and their work has really enhanced the center of our home!

We recently had the pleasure of working with Rock House Design on a large home remodel. The input and ideas from RH transformed our 1960’s ranch into an beautiful modern farmhouse. There was great attention to detail - and we were so grateful to have them join our design and construction team!

We moved to Santa Rosa and purchased a home that needed to be updated throughout. We started with a remodel of the kitchen, and the first floor bath. In addition, the hardwood flooring was replaced throughout the first floor and new carpet on the second floor. We discovered Laruen on houzz. Based on the testimonials and photos we thought Lauren would be the one for our remodel design. We were very pleased with our interactions with Lauren. We particularly appreciated her approach in which she helped us through the difficult process of selecting each and every component for our remodel. We love the remodel and everyone who has visited has commented on the amazing design. We look forward to working with Lauren to complete a remodel of the remaining areas of our home. If you are looking for someone who is easy to work with, committed to making your remodel dreams come true, and works efficiently, Lauren should be your DESIGNER!!

Lauren helped us remodel our new home! With the clean, modern asthetic we wanted. We were incredibly pleased with the results. And had a great experience working with her.

Lauren was with us from start to finish of our home remodel project which included kitchen, living room bathroom, laundry room and doors and windows. She had a concept and we trusted her with it from design phase to the finishes. The end result is gorgeous and her concept gave us a living space that includes comfort, function and style. Where we started to where we are now is an absolute transformation. We love our home and we have Lauren to thank for this.

Lauren came to me highly recommended and I was also very happy with her work and would highly recommend her to anyone else. She made the process very easy. She designed a beautiful floor plan and picked out the most beautiful materials for my remodel. My kitchen look gorgeous now. She made it look even better than I was expecting. She is very available to your needs and I was having trouble choosing paint at the last minute and I called her and she came over immediatly and fixed my issue. I will use her again when I remodel our bathroom down the road!

Lauren is a wonderful person to work with, she listens and has great ideas to help design and manage projects. We are a cabinet shop and have worked with Lauren on quite a few projects and have always loved hearing her ideas and watching them come together to completion from the color choices to the hardware, her choices are right on, beautiful every time. We look forward to working with Lauren on many more projects.

I have been working with Lauren for over 6 years! She has designed almost every room in my house. She blends her style and your style to make beautiful spaces. When there has been a budget she has helped us keep that budget. Currently she is working on a remodel for my restaurant. The fact that we are still hiring Lauren Brandwein after 6 years should speak for it self.

Lauren was the architect for two projects/remodels that my wife and I did in wine country. We hired Lauren due to the amazing job she did on another project in wine country that we were very familiar with. We were thankful to leave much of the project to Lauren to choose fixtures, colors, floors etc. due to her outstanding taste and understanding of what we wanted and were very satisfied with the results. We would not hesitate to use Lauren again.

We had Lauren just recently do the re-design for our kitchen. I can't say enough good things about working with her. She did the re-design of our bathroom a few years ago, which, by the way, looks amazing! So there was no doubt she would help us with the kitchen. I'm in the kitchen quite a bit, so my only requirements where that, first and foremost it had to be totally functional (I didn't need a show piece, though it's certainly beautiful!) and second the wall between the kitchen and living room had to come down. To say I disliked the box I had to work in before was an understatement. Now I spend more time than ever in it, much to my husband's delight. I'm sure that Lauren adjusts her style for each client, but, as I told her, the thing that I like best about working with her is that she doesn't give me any choices. Which is perfect for me. I can't stand being overwhelmed by choices. She picked the flooring, the color of the walls and I'm pretty sure the counter tops. Of course I agreed with her choices, but I didn't have to look at a 100 different color swatches, counter chips, etc. Fine with me because the less I have to deal with that sort of stuff the better. I'm just not a fan of shopping unless I'm in a cooking store, so Lauren was a huge, huge help in material selection. The design and flow of our "new" kitchen is awesome. Lauren set it up to be totally functional for me. And the lighting is fantastic. Not only is the new kitchen beautiful to look at it I can actually see while I'm cooking/baking. One thing that I didn't know I needed was a pantry with pull out drawers. I knew I needed a pantry, but pull out drawers!?! I love it! If there is any doubt after reading this review if I would hire her again the answer is, without hesitation-YES, YES, YES!

Lauren designed a complete kitchen renovation for the 1990 condo we had just purchased. Being a condo, we were not free to restructure beyond the basic footprint, but Lauren managed to make maximum use of the space we had. That included adding a full wall pantry in an area that was basically dead space , maintaining the original smaller pantry space and incorporating an antique Hoosier kitchen cabinet that was a "must keep" for us. While an updated look was of interest to us, most important to me, personally, was a practical and functional layout. I really cook in my kitchen, and this was the first time in my 40+ years of home ownership that I had the opportunity to create a space where everything could be exactly where it was most convenient for me. Lauren did a great job of listening to my needs and desires, and making sure they were central to the design. That meant that even if it was small, I had to have a center island. It meant that even if it meant loosing some drawer space, i had to have lazysusans in the corner cabinets so I could get to everything in there without crawling on my knees. And there had to be room to accommodate the extra large sink and the 6-burner range that were essential for me. Once all that was settled, then we had fun with the aesthetics of the design. I originally selected Lauren based on her designs that I saw on Houzz kitchen photos. I could tell that her personality met mine in her design style, and once we met and talked about materials and color, I knew we were speaking the same language. That did not mean we always agreed on the choices, but we were able to discuss the options , and go over the pros and cons comfortably together. I trusted Lauren's judgment, and she respected mine as well. Between the two of us, we came to decisions that made us both satisfied with the results. At the same time, she also understood and worked well with the design specs and technical details with my husband, the engineer in the family. Another important factor in working with Lauren was that she stuck to her agreed fee schedule, while still always giving us the time we needed to consult with her, either in person or via e-mail or phone. Along the same lines, she was flexible about making the actual purchases, so that if we felt we could get a better price for certain items, she was fine with us getting them on our own. We also appreciated her access to products that we could not get as general consumers, and that added to the style elements of the design. Most important among these was her connection to a cabinet maker who could provide custom cabinets well within our budget. As with any major construction job there were moments of frustration and even uncertainty along the way. However, once the work was finally completed, our immediate reaction was---Lauren got it just right. She heard what we wanted, she had a good sense of our style and color comfort and designed a kitchen that was exactly what we had hoped for.