1300 Plaza Pacifica

A Quiet Kind of Rare : Bonnymede's Largest Floorplan

At Bonnymede, where units tend to share walls and floor plans, 1300 Plaza Pacifica breaks the pattern -- a configuration so rare within the community that only a handful were ever built this way. It is, without exaggeration, the largest layout the community has to offer -- three bedrooms, three baths, single-level living throughout, and a rare kind of quiet that comes from having no one pressing in from either side.
Enter via a private landing, and the rooms open outward in unhurried proportion. Light moves across wide-plank white oak underfoot, gathering beneath generously scaled ceilings -- a layout as gracious as it is chic. The remodel, carried out with evident restraint, resists the urge to overdo -- even air conditioning, uncommon in the community, has been added with quiet restraint. Two patios frame the day differently: one south-facing and generous, catching a glimpse of the Pacific; the other set apart for slow, unhurried dinners.

Outside, Montecito's better instincts reveal themselves. Butterfly and Hammond's beaches are close enough to reach in just moments. The Coral Casino's striped cabanas sit just across the way, and the Four Seasons Biltmore, soon to reopen, anchors the view. Toward Coast Village Road, the cafes and boutiques carry on as they always have, soon to be joined by the energy of Thomas Keller's latest offering at the Coral Casino -- a stretch of Montecito that hardly needed the introduction, and will have one more reason to linger.

This home doesn't need to make a statement. It is simply spacious, unshowy, and quietly composed -- which may be the truest form of Montecito elegance there is.