22 Home Tours That Go Inside the Personal Spaces of Vancouver’s Most Interesting People

At Home With Herschel Co-Founder Lyndon Cormack

Cormack’s Deep Cove home is fashionable, and it’s functional. And we couldn’t expect any less from Cormack, who built an entire brand around utility with style. “I mean, I’m very used to my own house,” Cormack laughs. “But when people come over it’s like—‘What is this place?’ There’s something about it that makes people stop.” READ MORE. 

At Home With Designer Claire Saksun

The fact a designer lives in this oddball townhouse is apropos: the block was developed years ago by a group of UBC architecture professors as an academic project—developers had deemed the site too awkward—so each unit is unique, ambitious and the diametric opposite of the cookie-cutter condos found elsewhere downtown. READ MORE. 

At Home With Sculptor Marie Khouri

If you’re lucky enough to explore the gallery-like home of Marie Khouri—watching natural light dance across pristine marble sculptures, exploring the wiry floral wall hangings and intricate charcoal topographies of her Middle Eastern hometown—you might assume that the artist herself is just as perpetually polished. But tiptoe down the basement steps and you’re likely to find Khouri in all her steampunk glory: outfitted in a gas mask, taking a blowtorch to a molten piece of bronze, surrounded by shards of offcuts, bits of Styrofoam, hacksaws and duct tape. READ MORE.

At Home With Artists Meg and Steve Hübert

The couple describes the space as a mix of “Memphis design, Palm Springs, a bit of Deco and just lots and lots of colour.” This creative aesthetic is appropriate, given that Meg and Steve are both working artists and instructors. (Their two kids, Fred, 16, and Bernice, 12, are both creative types too—they even contributed a few of the ceramic critters that sit on shelves Steve installed in an awkward corner.) Anything they haven’t made themselves has been acquired through barters with friends or through scavenging Facebook Marketplace. READ MORE.

At Home With Pizza Coming Soon’s Alex Rhek Usow, Photographer Hana Pesut and Their Four Year Old

It’s been almost four years in this space, which Usow describes as “messy, chaotic, full of love and full of children and adults screaming.” They’re within walking distance of the irreverent Pender Street izakaya Usow runs, Pizza Coming Soon, and the aesthetic of Usow’s restaurant bleeds into the home—or maybe it’s vice versa. READ MORE.

At Home With Content Creators Nina Huynh and Dejan Stanić

In Nina Huynh and Dejan Stanić’s eclectic New Westminster home, you’ll find pastel-painted doors, nostalgic neo-pop art (think childhood cereal mascots in Supreme hoodies) and an undeniable DIY spirit. It’s hard to believe they’ve only been here for three years—save for a brief L.A. detour—because the place feels like a long-established creative playground. READ MORE. 

At Home With Pyrrha Founders Danielle and Wade Papin

If you’re familiar at all with the jewellery of Pyrrha, you won’t be surprised by what you’ll find inside the couple’s personal space. “We like the juxtaposition of old and new,” explains Wade—a sentiment just as true of Pyrrha’s iconic talisman-design pendants as it is of their eclectic interior design. READ MORE. 

At Home With Former Canucks Forward J.T. Miller and Interior Designer Natalie Miller

Their massive white sofa serves as the centrepiece of the living room. In addition to guests, it often supports the Millers’ three kids and the family’s two dogs. Despite that, only one part of it looks at all worse for wear: J.T.’s well-worn spot on the large sectional. “The dogs can both lie on me from there and I can put my drink on the table,” he says. READ MORE.

At Home With Goh Ballet Director Chan Hon Goh

Goh’s home is peppered with treasures that call back to important people or moments in her life: a sofa that reminds her of one in a mentor’s office, a jade figurine handed down from her father, an ornate vintage table purchased when she and Che were early in their relationship that still hosts family dinners to this day. Even without the Christmas decor, it’s a space that sparkles with nostalgia and stories. READ MORE.

At Home With Claire Hutchings and Tyler Quantz, Owners of Dilly Dally Kids

Commercial Drive’s Dilly Dally Kids is a whimsical space, for obvious reasons: that’s just how toy stores tend to be. But stepping into the low-rise West End apartment of owners Claire Hutchings and Tyler Quantz (and 10-year-old son Otis) is an equally playful experience, chockablock with colour, vintage-inspired touches and (of course) plenty of toys. READ MORE. 

At Home With Jewellery Designer Melanie Auld

Unsurprisingly, jewellery designer Melanie Auld’s bright and chic Dunbar home is all about the details. She brings the same honed vision that helps her craft her elegant-enough-for-a-gala-but-timeless-enough-for-everyday jewellery into her personal space. READ MORE.

At Home With Sean Cunningham and Matt Senecal-Junkeer, Owners of Birds and the Beets

Rumour has it that this used to be a brothel. And a hideout for the Vancouver Communist Party. And the highest home in Strathcona, when it was first built in 1908. But while we can’t confirm that these theories from the realtor are true, here’s what we do know for sure: Matt Senecal-Junkeer and Sean Cunningham, co-owners of Gastown coffee spot The Birds and the Beets, have created a home here that’s something special. READ MORE.

At Home With Drag Artist Kendall Gender

We’ve barely been in Kendall Gender’s Yaletown apartment for one minute before she’s offering to make everyone coffee and giving a quick lesson on different varieties of press-on nails. When our art director compliments her makeup, she politely insists she isn’t wearing any (it’s a quip that has us all giggling—later, she tells us she’s been up since 7:30 a.m. getting ready). An artist prepares, and this drag queen’s downtown Vancouver home is the perfect spot to get ready and stay ready. READ MORE.

At Home With Artist and Designer Carson Ting

In 2007, Carson Ting moved  from Toronto to the West Coast with a plan: he’d work for his dream marketing agency for two years, then head back to the 6ix. “But I fell in love with Vancouver,” he says while sipping green tea in his West End home nearly two decades later. Looking around the whimsical, climbing condo (count five small sets of stairs zig-zagging up to the top level), flooded with natural light and splashed with colourful artwork, it’s easy to feel that love. READ MORE. 

At Home With Karri Green-Schuermans, Co-Owner of Chambar

Over the past 20 years, the acclaimed, Belgian(ish) downtown restaurant Chambar has hosted tens of thousands of guests. But owner Karri Green-Schuermans doesn’t end her hospitality there. “My house is a revolving door of great people coming through Vancouver,” she grins. “It’s a joke amongst friends—Karri’s hotel.” READ MORE. 

At Home With Youtuber J.J. McCullough

With interior design stories, you often read about homes “designed with entertaining in mind.” The downtown loft of J.J. McCullough is perhaps the opposite. There’s no dining table here, or coffee table. There’s no sofa either. (McCullough relaxes in the tub or on his bed in the loft upstairs.) And if you open the fridge: as empty and clean as the day he moved in. READ MORE.

At Home With Rebecca Bree Founder Rebecca Rawlinson

“It turns out I’m a shop girl but I’m also a gardener,” laughs Rebecca Rawlinson. It’s a passion she discovered during the early days of pandemic lockdown, and in 2020, she and husband Rick Leo left their East Van duplex for the quiet streets of North Vancouver to (quite literally) find some room to grow. They fell in love with their little blue house before they even walked in the front door. “The backyard sold us,” says Rawlinson. “There were fig trees and rhododendrons and a little greenhouse. I was like, ‘That’s it, I’m done.’” READ MORE.

At Home With Artist Carla Tak

Twenty years later, Tak diligently walks to her studio at Parker St. six days a week to paint, but her bright Olympic Village apartment with its views of the North Shore mountains and the heritage buildings of Gastown offers ample inspiration in her off hours. READ MORE.

At Home With Photographer Evaan Kheraj and Fashion Stylist Luisa Rino

Picture this: a home bursting with life, thanks to a dynamic duo and their three pint-sized powerhouses. Meet photographer Evaan Kheraj and fashion stylist Luisa Rino, a creative power couple who, six years ago, welcomed their three girls from Lesotho and turned their twosome into a lively family of five. READ MORE.

At Home With Interior Designer Aleem Kassam

Kassam’s creativity and flair permeate the stunning Gastown loft he renovated alongside his husband, Victor Kazakov, in 2020 and 2021, especially in his massive walk-in closet and dressing area, a place that seamlessly combines his passion for fashion and interior design. “So much of my life revolves around working and collaborating with both local designers and international designers, but also mixing fashion and jewellery from a variety of household brands. Accessories are a huge part of the way I curate myself, just like I curate spaces,” he says. READ MORE.

At Home With Chef Angus An

Angus An has a lot of Lego. Even a quick scan of his cozy East Van abode yields detailed models of quaint neighbourhoods, intergalactic transportation and historic structures (the massive Colosseum is a standout). And upon closer inspection, there’s even more. The delicate pink orchids? Lego. The tiny dinosaur skeletons? Lego. The typewriter? Also Lego—and with working buttons. READ MORE.

At Home With Author, Entrepreneur and Pastry Chef Jackie Kai Ellis

There’s always a beautiful dual intention that goes into designing a space: finding that sweet spot between the way you actually live and the way you want to live. And multi-hyphenate Jackie Kai Ellis—author, TV and podcast host, entrepreneur, pastry chef, creative woman-about-town, etc., etc.,—walks the tightrope between aspiration and actuality with impeccable style in her South Granville heritage home. READ MORE.