Una Malan Reimagines the Showroom as a Home

Collectible Design · Los Angeles

In the hills above Sunset Plaza, Una Malan has reimagined the showroom as something far more intimate: a private house where every piece of art, furniture, and lighting is there to be lived with and quietly taken home.

The idea of shopping for design inside a real home finds its fullest expression in Una Casa Privada. The name translates as “A Private House,” and that is precisely the experience on offer: a unique, experiential design destination, curated and designed by Malan herself, where an evolving cast of furnishings, lighting, art and accessories is arranged not as stock but as the contents of a life. Guests are invited simply to explore, to feel inspired, and, should something speak to them, to take it home.

Tucked into the hills above Sunset Plaza and just steps from the Design Quarter, Una Casa Privada functions as a residential extension of the Una Malan Los Angeles showroom. A house persuades, and this reimagined classic villa, wrapped in lush gardens and timeless architecture, makes the case for each object by showing it in context. A light here is a light over a table; a chair is a chair you can imagine sitting in, in a room you can imagine living in. For designers and their clients, that shift is the whole point.

A house that keeps evolving

What sets the concept apart is its refusal to stay still. Una Casa Privada is described, pointedly, as an evolving property, its rooms hosting an ever-changing array of collections that move between the beloved and the emerging. It is a model that rewards return visits; the house a client walks through this season will not be quite the house they walked through last. That constant refresh keeps the space close to a living interior, and it allows Malan to introduce newer designers alongside established names with all the ease of a home that keeps growing.

The intimacy of the setting does a great deal of work here. The villa offers a sequence of domestic spaces, each one an argument for how these pieces might actually be used. Surrounded by mature gardens and architecture of a quiet, timeless confidence, the house encourages the slow, considered looking that good design deserves, and gives every visitor the time and calm to do it.

Retail reimagined as experience

At its core, Una Casa Privada is an attempt to rethink how clients approach both design and shopping. The immersive, lived-in format collapses the distance between browsing and imagining, so that the act of selecting a piece becomes inseparable from picturing it at home. It is retail reframed as experience — and, just as importantly, as relationship.

That collaborative spirit runs through the project. Una Casa Privada is conceived as a meeting point for partners across architecture and the wider design fields, the disciplines essential to any serious project, and it positions Malan’s house as a place where those conversations can happen in a setting that already feels like home. For the LA design community, it offers something special: a space with all the warmth and ease of a home, where the emphasis falls on inspiration first and acquisition second.

More than a place to shop

The house is not only a place to look at design. Una Casa Privada also hosts a diverse programme of creative events spanning artists, galleries, exclusive design showcases, fashion and wellness — a calendar that deliberately unites the best of home and lifestyle under one roof. It is a natural evolution of the concept: if the point is to make design feel like part of everyday life, then filling the house with the events and encounters of a well-lived one only sharpens the idea.

The result is a destination that resists easy categorisation. It is part showroom, part gallery, part private residence and part event space, and it draws its energy from being all of those things at once. In a city rich with beautiful objects, Una Malan has built something wholly her own: a house that makes you want to live differently, and happens to sell you the means to do it.

Una Casa Privada is a residential extension of the Una Malan Los Angeles showroom, in the hills above Sunset Plaza. Visit Una Malan for more.