“I hate walking into a mid-century or contemporary home that feels like the set of Mad Men,” declares Michael Hilal, founder of a namesake San Francisco studio. As a native Californian, Hilal eschews the shiny and glossy in favor of  natural materials and colors. “California is a little sun beaten, so even the perfect has to be a little imperfect,” he notes. In this San Diego post-and-beam home, Hilal’s design for the kitchen and dining room embodies an indoor-outdoor ethos, sporting a color palette that reflects the sun-speckled foliage outside the black-framed window walls. The clean-lined kitchen, with open marble shelves and cabinets painted in Farrow & Ball Studio Green, is lit by an Apparatus Trapeze chandelier and SkLO pendants. A grouping of Alvar Aalto birch-plywood chairs sits at the island, complementing the wide-plank-wood floor and a custom-designed dining table supported by two contrasting sculptural pedestals. Around this, Hilal arranged a dozen classic Verner Panton Series 430 dining chairs with exposed black-metal frames, purchased on 1stDibs. “They seem familiar in a mid-century way,” the designer says. “But in the context of this space and with the mustard-ocher upholstery, they felt fresh and new.”