Wooded Bliss

With its down-to-earth demeanor, casually collected cool factor, and seriously stunning surroundings, this happily disconnected Northern California cabin puts the "why" in Wi-Fi.

- By Rhonda Reinhart

With its soaring redwood ceilings and plank walls, Emily Ward's Northern California vacation home feels almost as if it was carved out of a massive tree. "It just feels so warm," she says of the 2,000-square-foot house perched on a wooded parcel that backs up to state parkland. "It's like heaven on earth."

Emily, who, with Louisa Pierce, makes up one-half of the L.A.-based design duo Pierce & Ward (pierce and ward.com), and her boyfriend, actor Giovanni Ribisi, purchased the rural property a couple of years ago and promptly changed nearly nothing about the 1960s-built house. For the couple and their two kids, 4-year-old twins Maude and Enzo, the wood-wrapped interiors were ideal just as they were and fell perfectly in line with Emily's style of decorating. "I am really drawn to earth tones," she says. "It was easy to just go with the nature of the house the way it was."