Fashion Designer Trina Turk’s Palm Springs Home Lists for $3.5 Million

Palm Springs has a well-derserved reputation for impeccably preserved midcentury modern residences. A dilapidated 1960s home clutched to a rocky slope in a coveted enclave at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains was, however, anything but perfect when fashion designer Trink Turk stumbled upon it about two years ago.

“The bones of the house told me somebody who knew what they were doing designed this place,” Turk tells the New York Times. She was right. It was built in 1963 by architect Harold Bissner, Jr., the acclaimed talent also behind Mojave Desert’s Volcano House. She scooped the place up in late 2024 for $1.25 million, and after carrying out renovations, named it Soleil House, a fitting moniker considering the picturesque glass walls flood it with sunlight.

Situated about three miles south of the downtown district, the residence sits atop nearly half an acre of land with about 2,280 square feet of living space. Turk gutted and reconfigured parts of its interiors, including a section of the living room, which was lowered two feet to create a sunken conversation pit. “It’s a much more expansive view when you’re lower,” she says. Elsewhere are three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a powder room dressed in palm tree-patterned wallpaper.

“Trina Turk is about color, texture, pattern, and optimism,” the designer says in a statement. “My goal was to create a new expression of the brand by incorporating the same touchstones into the decor.” That much is clear from the living room’s mustard yellow built-in couch to the kitchen’s eye-catching aqua blue backsplash tiling. A breakfast bar separates the kitchen from a casual dining space with a rocky hillside view.

Wood-paneled ceilings and stone floors trail the abode, balancing out colorful patterned wallpapers and gleaming brass light fixtures. In the primary bedroom, sliding glass doors in the room open directly out onto the pool deck for sunrise yoga and late-night dips.

During the renovation of the pool, its original, corroded water jets were discovered. “They were embedded in the side of the pool to create little arcs of water shooting into the pool,” Turk says. The effect has since been recreated with a new system, making it “a little bit Las Vegas.” 

RELATED: Cary Grant’s Former Palm Springs Getaway Hits the Market for $12.7 Million

Soleil House is now available for $3.49 million with Chris Menrad and Keith Markovitz of TTK Represents of Compass.

Turk has long kept a toehold in Palm Springs. She and her late husband, photographer Jonathan Skow, previously held the keys to a home known as the Ship of the Desert, which they bought back in 1998. She has also owned a few other modern marvels in California, including Salkin House, a 1940s home by maverick architect John Lautner that’s tucked away in Los Angeles’s Echo Park neighborhood as well as a 1960s hideaway by the architect Joseph Esherick in the Sea Ranch on Northern California’s Sonoma Coast. Clearly, the designer has more than great taste in clothing.

Click here for more photos of the Palm Springs residence.