You’d be forgiven for rolling your eyes at the mere mention of another family-friendly house. The style is sometimes characterized by cartoonish themed bedrooms, “approachable” (read: boring) fabrics, and the deployment of nearly every kind of storage basket under the sun. But when Emily Morris broached the subject of a new family home—in a leafy San Francisco suburb in Marin County—with Alexis Tompkins and Leann Conquer of Bay Area design firm CHROMA, she had entirely something else in mind. “I remember being a kid in the ’70s—everything was soft and round and carpeted,” says Morris. “I wanted that for my kids. I wanted the house to feel like a pillow.”

The process began when she and her husband, Javier Soltero, hired midcentury restoration specialists Marmol Radziner to infuse a recently purchased 1953 ranch with new life. “The biggest and most important change was opening up that main space so that you’re seeing it as if you were in the tree,” says design partner Ron Radziner, referring to the massive redwood that sits just outside the living room window. Over the next 18 months, his team knocked down walls and added skylights, gutting the space to improve the structure’s flow and finishes with the architecture firm’s signature brand of warm modernism. “The house became brighter and more connected—a more thoughtful, inspired version of a typical midcentury home,” he says. It also made that beloved tree visible from virtually every room. “It’s part of what we loved about the house,” says Morris. “At night it looks like this giant octopus with its branches furled out like tentacles.”

“The Lucite Charles Hollis Jones bar stools are from the 1962 Playboy Town Home and were the first pieces we got for the house,” recalls Tompkins. The rich veining in the white macaubus quartzite countertops play off the graining in rift-sawn white oak millwork. The range is by Wolf, the oven is by Miele, and the refrigeration is by Sub-Zero. The vintage kilim runner is from ABC Home.

With the improved framework in place, Tompkins and Conquer set to work implementing Morris’s vision, using curvilinear forms, sumptuous textures, and more than a few playful elements. “Nostalgia can be a very powerful thing,” says Tompkins. “We researched historic design and translated themes like heavier volumes and low profiles through our knowledge of fashion to give it a contemporary lens.” You see it in the self-welt leather tie detail on the bed frame in the master suite, as well as in the tactile geometric grids on view in the custom floor coverings throughout the home. Other one-of-a-kind creations, from the sculptural marble dining room table to the striped outdoor seating pit, enhance a feeling glam 1970s chic as much as cozy comfort.

The mix is perhaps most appropriately highlighted in the living room, where a vintage Mario Bellini modular sofa—not incidentally the piece that became the foundation for the house’s aesthetic—plays off the wiry energy of Terje Ekstrom’s Ekstrem chairs. “It’s funny because it’s supposed to be for the parents, but my kids use the living room as a jungle gym,” says Morris. “It’s the room everyone wants to be in.” That, after all, is what a family home should be.