“I love a sense of history in something. I love a patina, I love seeing someone else’s touch, or seeing a stain, or seeing a nick or a chip. Materials get soft and they get round and they change color,” says Jenna Lyons, a titan of style who transcends genres and trends (and who needs no introduction, really), of her lifelong appreciation for the timeworn that underpins her vibrant sense of design. I admire her sense of style and humor, her incredible business savvy and brazen risk-taking, and her passionate embrace of imperfection. It is no surprise that her homes past and present embody these incandescent personal traits and have proven fodder for countless aesthetes who swoon over her colorful, singularly personal point of view that breaks with convention.

A long stint of Brooklyn brownstone living informed Jenna’s list of prerequisites in the search for a new home, namely that she wanted it to be all on one floor and large enough to accommodate the “main parts of life,” like cooking, eating, hanging out. A proper SoHo floor-through loft fit her square footage requirement but little else. Unfazed, Jenna transformed it according to her penchants—French architecture, oversized crown moldings, and unfinished herringbone floors. She embodies the skill and confidence to repossess such a space.

When you walk into the apartment, there is so much to take in visually that your eye doesn’t land on any one thing. This is not accidental, but rather a testament to Jenna’s immense skill at layering. A Serge Mouille sconce peeks out from behind a jungle-motif Dimore Studio screen; a leopard-print pouf sidles up to a pink Milo Baughman sofa. There is an artful mastery and playfulness in her placement and mélange of objects, materials, finishes, and patinas, yet this particular mix still reads bohemian. The way Jenna famously married sequins and camo mirrors her rule-breaking tendencies at home.

“I realized that taking a chance and trying something new was probably more valuable than just staying within the borders and what everybody else had done.”

Jenna deliberately disrupts the symmetry of the architecture by hanging her artwork off-center, or even leaning it on the floor; it feels revelatory and unexpected, but more important, the eccentric placement highlights the work. After finding a Milo Baughman sofa, the anchor of the main living space, she altered its original design by removing the tufting and upholstering it in a pink cotton velvet. “In my job, I got used to having to say, ‘This is what we’re gonna do, it’s gonna be okay, we’re gonna try it,’” she says. “Taking a chance and trying something is probably more valuable than just staying within the borders and what the rules are.” But her decisions are not half-baked. She spent hours poring over a cascading ombré of pink swatches to study which shade was best in various light temperatures throughout the day and evening, and in all sorts of weather patterns.

Green and pink—a combination that has a decidedly preppy reputation—is a recurring color pairing in the home. However, here it reads as anything but. It’s made fresh and cool in Jenna’s hands: An Aldo Tura pale malachite-hued goatskin cube cozies up to the pink sofa; avocado-green lacquer covers the powder-room walls; French eighteenth-century threadbare peridot mohair chairs are sprinkled throughout the living room; even a menagerie of plants fuse the home in this surprising color palette. She credits Dimore Studio for influencing her brazen color choices. “I’m so taken by their unapologetic color mixing and unusual textures and combinations.”

At the nexus of fashion, art, design, and travel, Jenna naturally brings these elements into her home. She commissioned floating brass-clad bedside tables in homage to Donald Judd, and a bathroom at the Gritti Palace in Venice inspired her to source monumental and vigorously veined marble for her own. Jenna is a soothsayer, channeling and filtering ideas between the various disciplines. It is part of a magical aesthetic equation that separates her as an original. “When people are like, ‘That’s so cool!’ I’m like, ‘Great! It wasn’t intentional,’” she says. Her admirers, meanwhile, wait with bated breath to see what she might do next—unintentional or otherwise.

With a profound love for the details and patina of French architecture, Jenna worked granularly with the contractor to finesse the millwork, moldings, extra-tall doors, and high doorknobs (she is five eleven, after all!) to reflect that appreciation. In all of the finishes Jenna chose throughout the home—the unlacquered brass backsplashes, the honed marble countertops, the unfinished oak floors—she wants life to be visible. “I literally had long conversations with my contractor about making sure the floors weren’t too perfect,” she says. “I wanted them to wear enough to show spills and reveal the markings of people’s footsteps walking down the hall.” It is symbolic of the honesty of life she craves. Because she’s imperfect, and she has always clung to that individual imperfection. “I’ve never felt comfortable looking perfect or being perfect; my taste is weird, and I couldn’t make a perfect room if I tried,” Jenna says. She learned that was her gold: Know thyself, and let your home be a reflection of what works for you.

“I love a sense of history in something. I love a Patina, I love seeing someone else’s touch, or seeing a stain, a nick, or a chip.”