Moon Juice Founder Amanda Chantal Bacon’s Enchanting Montecito Home Has a Life of Its Own

Nothing about Amanda Chantal Bacon’s process for finding a house was ordinary. As the founder of cult-favorite wellness brand Moon Juice, she has always believed in opening the window of opportunity and pursuing the road not taken. (Since 2012, Bacon has been disrupting the industry with her line of Gwyneth Paltrow–approved adaptogenic products.) When she and Gregory Rogove, her musician turned real estate agent husband, were ready to begin the hunt for a new home for their family of four, they initially had their sights set on Kauai or the San Juan Islands. But as the unfolding pandemic soiled their plans, a new manifestation emerged: a home by George Washington Smith (an esteemed architect known for Spanish Colonial Revival residences in the region) with an intact floor plan in Montecito.

Bacon and Rogove seemingly got lucky—after an agent tipped them off about a potential off-market listing in Santa Barbara, they dared to take fate into their own hands by trying to find it themselves. “I have a picture of us driving around and finding the house before we were supposed to know which one it was,” she recalls. “A person had told us that if we peed on the property that was a good spell to cast, so I was like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to pee on the property.’ Then we kissed because I also thought, ‘That feels like a good spell too.’”

Once their offer was finally accepted, the couple wasted no time preparing for the big move. After spending over a decade living in Los Angeles (and upgrading from a “love shack” in Venice to a midcentury-modern house in Santa Monica), Bacon was eager to part with pieces from her past. “I got rid of all of my clothes, shoes, and bags. We got rid of everything,” she adds. Coming in at about 3,500-square-feet, the Montecito property was a bit of a downsize compared to their previous residence in Rustic Canyon, but Bacon was delighted by the prospect of taking up less space—and leaving behind heaps of belongings.

Bacon did hold onto her prized collection of antique furniture. (She proudly took notes from President Obama’s “decorator in chief” Michael S. Smith to source her own American antique beds.) After patiently waiting to find the right place for these artifacts to live, she knew the time had finally come, but Bacon had no clue how to bring everything together. “All of a sudden we had some large pieces sitting in the house and I was like, ‘Help! [Between] running a company and having young children, there’s absolutely no time for me to do that,” she remembers. This is where Kelly Bergin entered the picture.

The Los Angeles–based interior designer came highly recommended by a mutual friend, but it was her ability to make Bacon feel seen and heard that sealed the deal. “[Bergin] was able to hear too many ideas, keep it focused, do a really good edit, and actually deliver something that was way more refined than what I was thinking of, but scratched the itch that we were looking for,” she says. “She’s very talented in that way.”

Bergin remarks that from the very beginning, it felt like she was working with a blank slate. “[Bacon] was so open and trusting, and I so appreciated that,” she says. “It made her truly a dream client. There was a mutual understanding from the start. We became great friends through this process, which made the result a lot more special—it’s a place where we hang out now.”

Given that the historic house already felt like a coastal country getaway, Bergin wanted to incorporate elements that would channel a slower, quieter pace. “There had been talk of florals and a riot of colors and prints, but the more I talked to her, the more it seemed like she was really in need of a serene, functional home for her family that felt very peaceful,” she recalls. It certainly would have been easier to commit to a singular bold aesthetic, but that’s just not how Bacon is programmed. “Don’t get me wrong, I love some English countryside maximalism, but I really appreciate the approach she took with this project,” she adds.

In regards to the renovation, Bacon and Bergin were fully aligned on respecting the integrity of the home by maintaining as much of the existing design footprint as possible. “We were sensitive to keep it in the spirit of the original design,” Bergin says, “but add some freshness to it.” After connecting on Instagram with the granddaughters of the owners who built the house back in the 1920s, Bacon felt inspired to restore details that had been erased, like a charming breakfast nook in the kitchen. Cabinetry from a remodel in the ’90s was removed and replaced with a plastered range hood.

A sense of timelessness was the most important part of the scheme for Bacon. “I didn’t want anything trend-focused, whether that’s a color, a material, or a designer,” she explains. “I wanted everything to feel like you couldn’t place it, so that even meant shying away from a particular light I had my eye on for 20 years.” Bergin managed to achieve this effect by mixing decor from different eras and layering the textures that made each vignette look as though the pieces were collected over time. “We talked about it being like a multi-generational family had owned this home and kept adding [pieces] through the decade; I think it tells a nice story,” she says.

The great room, a warm womb drenched in buttery tones that Bacon reserves for sipping Sleepy Girl Mocktails in the evenings by candlelight, is a prime example of making this approach work in one’s favor. While there are subtle doses of Art Deco that nod to the period that the home was originally built, accent pieces like Tobia Scarpa’s iconic Fantasma floor lamp and a giant amethyst bring in an energy of edginess that still feels harmonious with everything else in the space.

Now that this transformation is complete, Amanda Chantal Bacon views the experience as a teachable moment for “modern living in an old house.” After one too many years of living inside a construction zone, she couldn’t be more pleased with the sweet fruits of their collective labor. “There’s a picture of us kissing in front of our house…we didn’t know if this was the one, but it felt like the one,” Bacon smiles while reflecting on the process. “Maybe it was my pee that got me in, or maybe it was the spirit of the house that wanted a family to come back.”