February 15, 2026Nothing motivates the efficient, swift completion of a project like a tight deadline. Dallas-based designer Dafna Kikuchi discovered just that when a friend and former business-school classmate approached her to outfit the Spanish Colonial home she had purchased in the tony Dallas enclave of Highland Park. “Both of us were six months pregnant,” the Daf & Co. principal recalls. “We had to get things done before our babies arrived.”
Highland Park has undergone several waves of development since its establishment, at the turn of the 20th century. The friend’s 5,000-square-foot, four-bedroom house was designed as a duplex during the 1920s by Marion Fresenius Fooshee and James B. Cheek, who also created the upscale Highland Park Village mall, which opened in 1931 and is now a National Historic Landmark. The home was in very good shape, with only the kitchen requiring renovation.
“It was their first house, and they were really interested in design,” Kikuchi says of the 40-something owners — she a management consultant, he a financier — who at the time were expecting their third child (now three years old). “They wanted to bring out the architecture of the house and honor its history.”
Kikuchi is known for her love of pattern, and the wife, she notes, “wears a lot of prints and is even more into them than I am.” Together, designer and client created a judicious mix of patterns and clean surfaces that made the home feel more open, airy and modern.
Several of Daf & Co.’s signatures push back against the prevailing style of Dallas interiors. “People love symmetry here,” says Kikuchi. “I want things to be a little bit wonky, a little bit off, so that there is a degree of planned imperfection. I also like to have vintage pieces in every room. It gives a house soul.”
In the case of this project, she notes, the couple had a sizable collection of mid-century modern furnishings, and the wife had inherited many older pieces from her family that she wished to incorporate. In addition, while envisioning a house that exuded personality, “they didn’t want something precious.” Kikuchi responded with performance fabrics in the kid-friendliest areas, as well as jute rugs and indoor-outdoor furniture in many of the rooms. The introduction of natural fibers and materials gave the home a casual sophistication.
Here, Kikuchi takes Introspective on a tour
ENTRY HALL
The entry boasts original arched windows with leaded-glass details. Kikuchi kept the decor spare, deploying Belgian clay tiles and, from the clients’ former home, a faux bamboo chest and a pair of cushy upholstered club chairs that had been in the primary suite. Between the latter, she placed a Jamb table, hanging a Vaughan Designs pendant light overhead.
LIVING ROOM
Kikuchi swapped the living room’s brick-and-tile mantel for a plaster one more in harmony with the architecture. On the floor, she laid a jute rug because, she says, “we needed a neutral base” to ground the patterns she planned to add.
Around a mid-century-inspired coffee table, she gathered 1950s Kerstin Hörlin-Holmquist lounge chairs, a coffee table from Blend Interiors and the clients’ vintage Edward Wormley sofa, formerly upholstered in a zebra print but now clad in a bright floral Pierre Frey fabric.
To impart a well-traveled aura, Kikuchi included a Chinese chair that had belonged to the wife’s father and a carved Moroccan side table. Behind the sofa, she hung a large painting by John Miranda, a Texas artist whose work often looks back to his upbringing near the United States–Mexico border.
On the side table, she placed a ceramic lamp that, like many around the home, is by local artisan Paul Schneider. Over the fireplace is a 1950s abstract winterscape by McKie Trotter, a member of the prestigious Fort Worth School of painters.
DINING ROOM
To assure an easy traffic flow in the dining room, Kikuchi created two distinct spaces. To one side are the clients’ dining table and vintage Finn Juhl chairs (their original cowhide seats and backs recovered in blue plaid), over which she suspended an Apparatus Signal Z pendant.
“We love to gossip,” the designer says impishly, explaining her placement on the other side of the room of a custom banquette, which offers a comfy perch for that activity. It is upholstered in a tawny performance velvet and trimmed with bullion fringe. A Giobagnara table provides an portable surface for beverages.
Kikuchi created focal points in the room by hanging pieces by regionally significant talents. Over the Spanish Brutalist credenza is a work by the Austin-born pioneering abstractionist Dorothy Hood, and above the banquette is a painting by Otis Dozier, who was part of the influential Dallas Nine group of artists.
Unifying the composition is a floral wallcovering with a rich but subdued palette. A niche painted deep blue contains a bar, a bench unearthed in Palm Beach, where the couple got married, and glass shelves lined with barware.
FAMILY ROOM
The family room illustrates Kikuchi’s knack for creating comfortable yet elegant spaces for multigenerational gathering. A custom sectional upholstered in performance fabric faces vintage McGuire Furniture Company rattan lounge chairs, their cushions recovered in a Rose Cumming floral. The bachelor chest by the French doors, overseen by a piece of Op Art, and the vintage side table were the clients’; the round coffee table is custom.
KITCHEN
The kitchen remains largely as Kikuchi found it, but she ran handmade zellige tiles up the walls to the ceiling and designed a plaster hood for the stove that, she says, “was more reminiscent of the plaster details throughout the house.”
The island is illuminated by copper Edmund pendants from Lostine and the shelves flanking the hood by Visual Comfort sconces. The fixture over the sink is from Urban Electric Co. Kikuchi tapped Waterworks for the plumbing fixtures.
POWDER ROOM
The designer enveloped this powder room in a Pierre Frey wallpaper, pulling the light purple from its palette for the “more casual” penny tiles on the floor. The vintage faux-bamboo mirror is flanked by Nickey Kehoe sconces.
PRIMARY BEDROOM
“Her father was a big collector of Texas Western art,” says Kikuchi, explaining the provenance of the works hanging in the primary suite. A painting by contemporary Texas artist Layla Luna, mounted above the bed, set the tone for the bedroom, which Kikuchi wrapped in a patterned Soane wallcovering. The bed, the clients’ own, is flanked by Art Deco–inspired nightstands. Task lighting is supplied by Victoria Morris lamps and Jessica Helgerson sconces from Roll & Hill.
A contemporary rope pendant above supplies a touch of natural fiber. It complements the similar-in-style Nickey Kehoe pendant in the window niche, which accommodates a lounging area. Wanting, she says “to bring the foliage from outside into the space,” Kikuchi papered it with a botanical wallcovering depicting nasturtiums. The retiled floor, a gingham-covered chair and the owners’ own sofa are anchored by a plaid resin table the wife’s mother found at an estate sale. “There’s a lot of flashiness in Dallas,” says Kikuchi. “With this space, I wanted to bring it down with natural textures.”
PRIMARY BATH
The primary bath brings in a bit of Dallas glamour with the clients’ Murano-glass chandelier and 1960s sconces. The mirror and French cane-backed chair were also the clients’. Kikuchi balanced the lighting and furnishings with a custom vanity and a vintage rug.
SON’S ROOM & BATH
“It’s a mature room,” Kikuchi says of the son’s bedroom. “They didn’t want something super babyish. And I don’t approve of that for kids either. I think they can have nice things, and you might as well get something they can grow with.”
One such “nice thing” here is a beaded African Yoruba chair that the clients bought while traveling. The designer paired it with a contemporary Danish-modern-style wooden bed and a 1960s-inspired yellow-lacquer bedside table topped by a vintage reading lamp.
Cole & Son’s Fornasetti Acquario wallpaper and white subway tile form the backdrop for the bathroom. An Arteriors mirror hangs above the custom vanity.
DAUGHTERS’ ROOM AND BATH
In the daughters’ bedroom, Spindle beds rest atop a Moroccan rug already owned by the clients. The Martyn Lawrence Bullard textile used for the treatments of the many windows gives the space what Kikuchi describes as “an Indian vibe.” That harmonizes nicely with the Indian kantha quilts on the beds and the ikat pillows.
In the play area, a vintage wicker floor lamp provides light for the girls when they are working or playing at the art table.
In the bath, terracotta sconces and a chunky wooden mirror with a disc and sphere motif add handcrafted touches. The walls are covered in the whimsical Kate Loudoun Shand print Pow, a reference, says Kikuchi to “the older sister, who is a firecracker.”
MUDROOM
There was no mudroom in the house, so Kikuchi converted a sun porch into one. She covered the floor with easily mopped tile and built lockers for foot- and outerwear. To these, she added the sofa from the vintage McGuire rattan ensemble whose lounge wing chairs are in the family room, to make it easier to put on and remove shoes and boots. The wife’s parents collected the majolica plates on the walls.
LOGGIA
By the pool outside the house is a loggia in which Kikuchi combined contemporary teak-framed furniture with an heirloom wicker chair she had painted blue. To the left of the sofa is a bronze Indonesian-rain-drum table. On the other side is a table from Paul Schneider Ceramics, a local studio.
