Inside a custom-designed Montclair artist's dream house

Nestled in the tree-lined streets of Montclair, 935 Monaco is an artist’s dream — emphasis on “dream,” since most artists don’t have $1.6 million to spare.

The Victorian farmhouse, which was built on an apple orchard in 1891, recently went on the market. (And the price is actually on the low end, thanks to the current state of Denver’s housing market.)

“We still have apples that grow every year,” says homeowner Phuong Nguyen, a practicing plastic surgeon, chef and frontman of the Los Angeles-based rock band Help the Doctor.

Nguyen and his family have moved around a lot, having lived previously in L.A., Philadelphia and Houston. Now, they’re headed back to LA due to “professional and personal unexpected changes,” and Nguyen says they’ll be sad to leave the 4,848 square-foot home with five bedrooms and three bathrooms.

It’s not the size that makes the home special, but the unique interior design. With color consultation by Garrett Hunter, who has worked on high-profile homes in Hollywood and been profiled himself in publications like ELLE Decor, Vogue and Architectural Digest, the home is the antidote to minimalistic Denver interior design trends, trading white, beige and gray for rooms of vibrant colors that glow all day in the house’s copious natural sunlight.

“He was a personal friend of ours in Houston,” Nguyen says of Hunter. “His profile kept on getting bigger and bigger. We always joked that we’d never be able to afford him if we weren’t friends first. We met at a time when his career was really starting to ascend in a way that sees the intersection of design, color and works with what clients’ personal preferences are. He did our house in Houston and we loved it.”

When they were looking at houses in Denver, Nguyen was a little disappointed to find that they all looked the same. “What stood out about this house was the uniqueness and the integrity of the structures. You can feel how solid the house is,” Nguyen says. It was all white when they bought it, but that was quickly remedied by Hunter.

“Having previously worked with the clients on a home, I was familiar with their preferences for theatrics,” Hunter says. “We referred to cinema and nostalgia, as the clients are film and music buffs. References to Luca Guadagnino films were heavily leaned into when considering the color, along with general warmth and life to counter Denver’s white winters.”

Although the house was built in 1891, it has been rewired and updated, allowing modern luxuries while preserving the Victorian style.

“The clients have lived in many interesting yet disparate locations, and we wanted to lean into their past while enhancing the Denver Victorian architectural vernacular,” Hunter says. “Since the house would have historically had an interior full of color, and the clients were most comfortable with that, we embraced it.”

The result is rooms that glow with a butter-yellow hue and different colors on the ceiling, to enhance the vibrancy (the bathrooms come in red, yellow and mauve). Paired with features like French doors and cathedral glass, the effect is reminiscent of another time…and definitely another place.

It would be the perfect place to live for someone who is cultured, creative and looking for inspiration. “It’s a very sophisticated buyer who’s not afraid to be themselves and doesn’t want to live in a plain white box,” says Natalie Hengel, realtor with The Agency Denver. “From a real estate perspective, that’s a design trend that is completely flipping over. Now it’s all about embracing your space, bringing in warmth, color, texture and life. I think minimalism went too far.”

But it doesn’t have to anymore. Here’s a peek inside the house:

The kitchen

Nguyen has enjoyed watching the Japanese maple outside the kitchen window as the seasons change, and the light that filters through the trees into the house.
A shelf built into the kitchen wall for cookbooks.
Inside the kitchen.