'Things Don’t Have to Be Perfect' – Jake Arnold Has Learned to Embrace the Process to Make Spaces That Are More Playful to Entertain In

British-born interior designer Jake Arnold has become known for spaces that feel at once cinematic and deeply personal – rooms layered with texture, warmth, and a distinctly relaxed sense of luxury. Based in Los Angeles, where he has designed homes for a roster of high-profile clients, Jake's work manages to balance Californian ease with the quiet refinement of the English interiors he grew up around.

But long before celebrity projects and international acclaim, his fascination with homes began as a child endlessly rearranging furniture in the suburbs of Britain, inspired as much by episodes of Changing Rooms as by the grand historic houses of his school friends.

In the latest instalment of our Layered Lives series, Jake Arnold reflects on his winding route into design, the insecurities that delayed his pursuit of it as a career, and why creating soulful interiors is less about perfection than allowing spaces – and people – to evolve naturally over time.

Homes & Gardens: Let’s go all the way back to the beginning. Where do you think your love of design comes from?

Jake Arnold: I think I’ve always been obsessed with everything to do with houses. Even when I was a kid, I’d move my room around about five times a day. Then I’d go to friends’ houses, and I’d move their rooms around too. I went to a small school in the English suburbs from the age of 11 to 13, and a lot of the kids there lived in incredible historic homes (I was the comparatively poorer person in the school) – they’d live in original Tudor mansions or gorgeous Georgian homes, so I was always around amazing houses and just found myself drawn to them. I also loved the instant gratification of moving a space around and feeling joy when it suddenly comes together.

Homes & Gardens: Did your parents have a flair for interiors too?

Jake Arnold: My mom was an artist who used to paint murals and had her own design company for kids that would do intricate wallcoverings for their rooms. I’d go with her and pick out furniture and paint colors. I remember being about 12 and walking around with a notebook, writing notes, and giving them to my mom’s contractor about things he should be doing instead.

Homes & Gardens: He must have loved you! What did your own room look like at this time?

Jake Arnold: It was a nautical brown wood bunk bed, and there was an incredible burgundy leather inlay desk. Then there were tartan Roman blinds on the window, and my mom painted three large-scale check patterns based on the blinds on the walls in a mustard yellow. I loved it. It had a level of refinement and didn’t feel like a child’s space.

Homes & Gardens: Can you remember any early influences that inspired you and showed you what interiors could be?

Jake Arnold: In my childhood, I was never really exposed to art – that just wasn’t who my family was – so my inspiration came from TV shows. In the UK, where I grew up, we had a show called Changing Rooms, where designers would make over people’s homes on a budget and do all sorts of weird and wonderful things. I was obsessed with the most ostentatious of the designers – Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, and I soaked all of that creativity in. I was never exposed to high design and never thought of it as a job, so I had to be self-taught later in life.

Homes & Gardens: When did you come to realise design could be the career for you?

Jake Arnold: From an emotional standpoint, I hid my love of design for so long. I didn’t acknowledge or own that it was what I wanted to do as a career, and I would say I wanted to go into property development. I had a shame around my perceived femininity of being interested in art, and so I pushed my interests away for so long. It wasn’t until I was about 21, and after I’d studied business and economics at university, that I started to understand – and even admit – that it was what I wanted to do for my job.

Homes & Gardens: What was your first role?

Jake Arnold: After university, I had a Twitter account, and I just searched for interior designers. I came across Jaime Rummerfield, who had done John Travolta’s house – she had shared a sizzle reel that she’d made for a reality show, and I thought it looked insane and so fun. So I just emailed her from London, and incredibly, she emailed back and said that if I could get to LA for a month, I could do an internship with her. My dad was like, ‘You can’t do that,’ but I had money saved up from my bar mitzvah, and although he was like, ‘You really can’t use that for this,’ I just did – I booked a plane ticket, rented a car, found an apartment. I met Jaime and she took me under her wing – that summer was life-changing. I was initiated into a different world and exposed to so much.

Homes & Gardens: What did you learn during that time?

Jake Arnold: One of the biggest things I learned was to make peace with the process of interior design, and to let your ideas change and inspirations evolve as projects take shape. Design is so much about budgets and service, but Jaime gave me the idea that I could also find a way to accept my process and embrace the idea of layering and curation over time. That’s what brings that soul to a space. And she taught me the love of vintage. When I grew up, I didn’t appreciate the concept of pre-owned pieces, vintage and antiques. Most people in England think it’s stifling to be around old things. But when I came here, to LA, because everything is new there is a yearning and desire for more storied pieces.

Homes & Gardens: Are there any early projects that stick out to you as a turning point in your career?

Jake Arnold: Yes, there was a project I did in Switzerland where the process had been very static and linear and things were just slowly evolving over time, where I was putting into practice everything Jaime had taught me about that being OK. It was on this project I started to really get the confidence to do that, to realize that before you start work on a space you don’t generally know what the light is like at each time of day, what each room is going to need. I used to just go along with whatever was being said, but on this project I learned to put my own opinions across and allow them to shift as the project went on.

Homes & Gardens: Now that you have that confidence, when starting a new project, what’s the very first thing you look for or ask that helps unlock the direction of the design?

Jake Arnold: A mix of a lot of visuals. I like to pull a lookbook together that’s a combination of look and feel, colors, textures, lighting. I say to the client, ‘What’s your favorite hotel?’ and ‘Let me see your playlist,’ so I get a general sense of who they are and what they like. Getting to know a client is like playing Clue – you have to have a lot of questions, and it’s not always about their home décor aesthetics. I’ll look at the way they dress, for example. That to me is the funnest part of the process. And then it’s also so fun to see how people respond to different fabrics. It allows me to design freely and present fully developed spaces.

Homes & Gardens: And you’re now doing up your own home – what is that process like? What will it look like?

Jake Arnold: Yes, I’ve just come back to LA, and I am moving into my new house next week. How I’m going to approach the decor is going to be so different to my work projects. There is no timeline, it’s going to be about being creative budget-wise, so I’ll be leaning into what I like, what resonates with me, what excites me. I want there to be a playful element, for it to make me feel playful.

Homes & Gardens: What sort of decor ideas have been resonating so far?

Jake Arnold: I’m thinking that I want this to be like if Tom Ford had a house with Dries Van Noten. Very clean and contemporary. Divorce chic! You know, like you’d lived in a manor house but were now downsizing but still had all these incredible antiques and had to make them work. I’m attracted to exotic and ornate things and to bold, rich, deep colors.

Homes & Gardens: What is the style of the home you’ve bought?

Jake Arnold: I never would have thought that I’d buy a house that was this contemporary. It’s very boxy, but it has volume and ceiling height, and so the light is what is going to give it personality. It was designed in the 1940s, but I don’t want to go all mid-century with what I put in it; I want to be a bit more nuanced than that.

Homes & Gardens: So, where will the playful elements come in, do you think?

Jake Arnold: I am excited about bringing people together. That’s the difference between a party at a house and one at a restaurant – at a house you can bring people together who maybe don’t know each other and it feels a bit less forced. So through the lighting, the casualness that I’m going to instill, that’s what will make it seem playful. I’ve learned to embrace the idea that things don’t have to be perfect and that just having people over to watch a movie or cook a dinner party is refined and elevated in itself.

Today, Jake’s interiors continue to evolve in much the same way he describes his process: intuitively, emotionally, and without rigid rules. Whether designing for clients or shaping his own newly acquired home in Los Angeles, his focus remains on creating spaces that feel lived-in, layered, and capable of bringing people together. It is perhaps this balance – between polish and playfulness, refinement and ease – that has made his work resonate so widely.

Even now, after years at the forefront of the design world, Jake still speaks about interiors with the same excitement as the teenager rearranging bedrooms and scribbling notes for contractors. For him, good design is not about creating perfect rooms, but spaces with enough soul, personality, and flexibility to grow alongside the people living in them.

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