Special Places · Bear Brand Ranch, Laguna Niguel
A House That Doesn't Repeat Itself
Bear Brand Ranch is a hilltop, guard-gated community with twenty acres of greenbelt between the houses, and this one uses its lot like a small resort — a lit tennis court, a pool and spa tucked behind twin palm-thatched gazebos, and a fountain courtyard out front under a grand rotunda entry. What made this one memorable wasn't the scale, though — it was the range. A formal dining room with a hand-painted ceiling sits a hallway away from a tiki-themed breakfast room with a mural of a beach at sunset, which sits near a game room done entirely in red with a checkerboard ceiling, which is down the hall from a medieval-themed wine cellar with a castle mural behind iron gates. Every room commits fully to its own idea, and the shoot became less about finding one consistent story and more about doing justice to eight different ones under a single roof. It took a few days on site to do it right, working through some genuinely difficult lighting from room to room — worth it once night fell and the coastline and city lit up below the hill.
Shot for Shawn Halan
