In one of his biggest projects yet, Jay Jeffers sets an entirely new estate for a tech mogul amid the historic Santa Lucia Preserve
Photography by SAM FROST
Words by ELIZABETH KHURI CHANDLER
Interior designer Jay Jeffers, who is based in San Francisco and New York City, knew from the beginning that Estancia Madera would be one of the standout projects of his life. “It’s rare when you have such a match of architect, builder, landscape designer, and client,” he says. “The Bosworths really trusted us and had great feedback, which made for a better project.”
And what an undertaking it was. In collaboration with Richard Beard Architects, Jeffers set out to imagine an entirely new estate — a 12,300-square-foot main residence and guest house, along with a collection of outbuildings — all furnished soup to nuts on 65 acres of pristine land nestled between Carmel Valley and Carmel-by-the-Sea. Budget: $45 million.
Texas-born Jeffers has been designing in the Bay Area for more than 25 years, first getting into the business as a second career after working in advertising at Gap and Old Navy. When he took a night class at UC Berkeley, he realized he had a new calling. “I could see myself making a living doing it and loving my job,” he says. The newly minted designer set up his own firm in 1999 and got his big break when the San Francisco Chronicle wrote a piece about up-and-comers, calling him a “brave new talent.” He has never looked back.
Many of his first clients were bachelors, and he still has a line with male singletons; three more bachelor pads are featured in his newest book, Modern Classic: Tailored Homes, Timeless Style (Simon & Schuster), due out this summer. Jeffers also co-owns and designed the interiors for the boutique Madrona Hotel in Healdsburg, a historic property and carriage house that got a refresh in 2021.
My vision was that this room was a 100-year-old stone barn and we built the house around it.
JAY JEFFERS
Jeffers’ philosophy is to focus on the clients’ tastes, rather than putting his own stamp on a property. This venture marked his second joint effort with April and Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, the current Chief Technology Officer of Meta. The first go-round resulted in a stunning San Mateo abode — featured in a C Magazine Men’s Edition in 2018 — and was celebrated among the tech cognoscenti for its fabulous cantilevered hot tub, which perches 35 feet off the ground.
In many ways the oh-so-modern first house was Boz’s project, Jeffers says. The new house, in a way, was April’s baby. The couple envisioned a home that felt eternal — one that seemed to have always belonged in the historic Santa Lucia Preserve, a landscape that has evolved from Mexican land grant to cattle ranch to 1920s luxury estate to a private gated community. Inspired by their travels to South America — particularly Argentina, where the Bosworths had visited several large-scale horse properties, called estancias — they asked Jeffers to create a domicile with the same sense of timelessness.
Beard crafted a site plan built around three courtyards: an arrival courtyard, a central spot, and a lateral one. Together the two teams decided on materials that would be Tundra Cream limestone, tile, and wood. Jeffers owned the color choices and furnishings that would embody what he calls “New Rustic.”
Outdoors, Jeffers used yellows, warm tones, and playful greens to echo the springtime grasses that grow on the property. Inside, he skewed toward dusky blues and rich reds to create a cool, retreating vibe.
Jeffers wanted the boundaries between exterior and interior to remain distinct yet harmonious. “It’s very much an indoor-outdoor house,” he says. “And I really love for the outdoors to feel like you’re outside and the indoors to feel like you’re inside. There’s such a huge selection of outdoor fabrics these days it can almost look like you are in a living room outside, but I want it to feel like you’re still outside.” For the ample shady veranda that lined the Great Room, Jeffers placed a salvaged stone coffee table and custom Fisher Weisman Collection dining table, with Mimi London chairs, and benches in cheerful green-and-white striped Jasper fabric.
For the interior, Jeffers particularly loved setting the stage for the Great Room. “My vision was that this room was an old stone barn that could have been on the property for 100 years and then we refurbished it and built the rest of the house around it,” he says.
To create that authentic country feel, Jeffers dipped into his vocabulary of vintage and antiques. With new construction, that aesthetic is even more important, he explains. “When you are in a very modern home and you put modern furniture in it, it feels like you’re in a showroom,” he says. “You need pieces that already have a scratch or two on them. Those are the things that bring soul to a place.”
But with anything classic, he likes a spot of modern to “amp it up.” The custom curved sofas by Thomas Sellars have dramatic bronze legs, and are juxtaposed with a vintage coffee table with a new custom leather top by Casey Gunschel. Made-to-order banquettes, vintage rugs and mirrors, and antique chandeliers are accented by a modern floor lamp from Paul Ferrante. And for the pièce de résistance, Jeffers sourced a magnificent 12-foot limestone fireplace from an Italian estate, in order to fulfill the request by Bosworth, who stands at 6 feet, 3 inches, for “a fireplace he could stand in.”
Every piece was chosen to balance authenticity with a modern edge — and that principle extended to lighting. For a connoisseur like Jeffers, who has his own hardware line, a great lamp or fixture adds a moment of drama to even the simplest room. The entryway centers around a fringed mirror from McGuire, flanked on each side by caterpillar-like cirriform bronze sconces that were designed by Netherlands artist Frederik Molenschot. They are sculptural, Jeffers says, but also very “of the earth.”
That grounded Gaucho feel pervades throughout. An expansive salmon-pink cinema room, with seats designed by theater interiors company Cineak, was conceived with the Navajo aesthetic in mind. Elsewhere in the house, the cozy family room, used for cuddling and watching TV, was fashioned into a little garden room. Hand-painted wallpaper by Fromental features ferns and Japanese aralia and wisteria, and then the eye is drawn upward to a dramatic chandelier of metal leaves by former jewelry designers Delos & Ubiedo. It’s almost as though the plants are growing inside the room, in both two- and three-dimensional forms.
For the annex and guest spaces, the couple and Jeffers went even more personal with their choices. “I want things to feel like they belong, and then juxtapose them with things that might not belong but may have been something you found when you were traveling or in your grandmother’s attic,” he says.
The guest room entry offered a perfect opportunity to play with that paradox. The Bosworths had purchased an inlaid mother-of-pearl settee in Morocco. They reupholstered it with peacock fabric by Holland and Sherry and set it on a honeycomb mandala-shaped rug by PFM. Next they tiled the walls with an array of works from The Lost Art Salon, a longtime San Francisco gallery filled with vintage art often priced from a few hundred dollars to the low thousands. Jeffers thought the gallery would be a perfect place to find reasonably priced, hyper-personal art. “They’re cat people. She’s a horse person. She’s into photography, and they travel a lot.” The Bosworths provided lots of input, returning to comb through the gallery as well.
That attention to detail extended to the rest of their art collection. The couple gave the design team a list of artists they were interested in, and the team provided presentations and renderings of possibilities throughout the dwelling. “They’d come back to us and say, ‘We like this on this wall, but how does it relate to this wall?’ ” Eventually the team placed 40 pieces throughout the estate, including a 3,000-piece Yoshitomo Saito installation made out of bronze fragments of leaves and fruit. “Oh God, it took two installers five days to install it!” he says. They also hung a charming geometric piece by Lucy Williams set against lustrous red tiles in the guest bathroom.
Estancia Madera will be available to be savored and enjoyed by art and interior lovers when Jeffers’ new book comes out next. It’s an exciting time, as he hasn’t published a book since Be Bold in 2018. This time he’s highlighting 13 homes from new and returning clients, mostly from the tech and finance worlds.
Reflecting on his career — particularly since COVID — he thinks his work has become more edited. But ultimately, a home has to be a place that brings happiness. Jeffers knew he had done his job when April told him the best part about her new retreat was being able to have a 360-degree view of her multigenerational family while she was cooking in the kitchen. “Ultimately, it’s a home for gathering,” he says.
Feature image: Around the pool, Jeffers arranged deck umbrellas by Santa Barbara Designs, as well as lounge chairs from McKinnon and Harris covered in fabric by C & C Milano, via De Sousa Hughes.
This story originally appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of C Magazine.
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