LET'S GET LOUD

Designer Leah Ring crafts an outré oasis in the Southern California desert.

- SEAN SANTIAGO

An exercise in letting go-that's how the designer Leah Ring describes her Yucca Valley, California, home, a secondary residence she shares with her husband, the artist Adam de Boer. De Boer, in fact, proposed on the property, though one year and a renovation later, a rogue sandstorm blew through on the day of the nuptials, a fitting welcome to desert life if ever there was one.

Ring-whose six-year-old Los Angeles-based studio, Another Human, works across residential and commercial interiors and product design-finds ample inspiration off the beaten (and sometimes brambly) path. Having studied under ELLE DECOR A-List designer Frances Merrill of Reath Design, she was well equipped to spot the potential in the compound, an atypical if otherwise unremarkable arrangement of four buildings just outside Joshua Tree National Park.

"I didn't want something that had been flipped," she says. And flipped it was not: One of the buildings even lacked a foundation. Ring painted each a poppy hue and set about manifesting "the most extreme version" of her taste throughout, designing a dynamic weekend retreat where she could replenish her creative juices while still being a stone's throw from the city. The result of the yearlong renovation happily leaves timidity, well, in the dust.

GO FOR BOLD