Not only has interior designer Chad Dorsey designed many homes for his clients, but he has also created ten spaces for himself. “The Surf Shack,” the name that he dubbed this new home, “was designed to be the last, at least in Dallas,” he smiled. On a property with a horizontally growing tree and beautiful greenery, he made the decision to tear down the existing and unsalvageable structure, to build his forever home from the ground up.

Inspired by the landscape and his love of Southern California, he decided that the theme for his new home would be a Surf Shack, a breezy space that fits into his signature design approach – “Relaxed Luxury”. “Essentially it’s about living casually with things a person loves to touch and feel in a way that is approachable and not precious,” he explained. “Often quiet, it can go unnoticed, but the user with a decerning eye will appreciate the details and the soothing feeling.”

Depending on the client, “Relaxed Luxury” can have different iterations. For Chad’s personal home, it’s about “restraint with purposeful bold accents and details.” The exterior of the house has several different materials, most notably Shou-Sugi-Ban shingles and black corrugated metal. As you walk in, you struck by the airiness of the 3000 square-foot home. “The Surf Shack is designed to have no wasted space,” he said. “I wanted to spend money on spaces that are enjoyed, experiences that are worthwhile while having restraint and avoiding excess or the unnecessary.” The floors of the home are all concrete, while there are some luxurious materials used at different punctuating moments, such as the Materials Marketing marble on the main bathroom wall as well as the bar featuring copper countertops and a geometric backsplash from Exquisite Surfaces.

As a sort of tribute to the fact that this was to be his forever home, Chad made a few choices that felt personal to him: “It was risky designing and building exactly what I wanted, and not what some real estate checklist or resale value dictated,” he shared. A graffiti mural in the home office by artist Joe Skilz is an example of how the home was perfectly tailored to Chad’s personality. “Designing a 3000 square-foot two-bedroom house doesn’t appeal to everyone,” he admitted. “But I would not change any space.”