Cabana Home

Cabana Home redefines traditional indoor and outdoor furnishings with items that reflect the Santa Barbara lifestyle. Featuring furniture, textiles and accessories from designers and manufacturers in America and Europe.

The extensive showroom displays indoor furniture and accessories and outdoor garden furnishings. Owners Caroline and Steve Thompson took an old 3,200-square-foot warehouse and its adjoining storage yard on lower Santa Barbara Street and transformed it into a light, open and sophisticated showroom while maintaining the area’s warehouse character. Home furnishings and designer lines include Baker, Donghia, David Sutherland, Janus et Cie plus Cabana Home’s own collection of custom-made upholstery. Estate sale finds of garden antiques and century old engravings, are mixed with outdoor terrace furnishings, lamps, rugs and a large collection of indoor and outdoor fabrics.

The couple met while working at Neiman Marcus in Dallas. Grounded in a retail background, Steve followed a successful career in real estate brokerage. Together, Steve and Caroline continued their shared love of collecting contemporary art and pursued their talent for designing informal, elegant residential properties through their own development company. They have built or redesigned 28 homes in Dallas, Santa Fe and Santa Barbara. Through the years their creations have been featured on the covers of national design publications.

The Thompsons moved to California with their daughter Mary Caroline and began remodeling a home in Montecito, but that is exactly what they found. “It was frustrating not to be able to find the items we envisioned, in our own hometown,” Steve says. “We traveled extensively to buy for our own home furnishing needs, and realized that if we had a need for a wider selection of home décor items, then others must as well. We wanted a store where customers could come in and feel comfortable looking around, where they can see offerings that are unique. Our pieces are transferable from showroom to life. We’re always searching for items that perfectly capture the essence of the Santa Barbara style.”

The accent here is on great design, and the architecture of the furniture, as well as representing the most luxurious fabrics and textiles from the United States, Europe and Asia. The Thompson’s travel to markets in New York, High Point, NC, and Europe for both new and antique furniture, art and accessories, scouring flea markets in Paris, Tuscany and Belgium.

Cabana Home offers one-stop shopping destination for the home, including carpeting, Interior and exterior lighting represented in the lighting gallery, contemporary art provided by Edward Cella Art+Architecture (the region’s foremost art dealer), antique European engravings, accessories, window coverings and full work room services for bedding, pillows, and re-upholstery.“The biggest difference in Cabana Home and other furniture stores is the fact that we carry a huge inventory, with our warehouse adjacent to the showroom. A customer can buy directly from the sales floor or warehouse without having to wait for a special order, and we have the ability and the inventory to furnish an entire home, without the buyer having to wait”, notes Caroline Thompson.

Complementary interior design service is provided in-store. Customers include homeowners as well as some of the most important interior designers in California.