Step Inside The Studio With Rocky Rochon

Visitors entering Rocky Rochon Studio in LA today might experience a sense of déjà vu. The Studio is reminiscent of NYC’s SoHo neighborhood of long ago: a once avant-garde art and rock-and-roll scene in the 1980s and early 90s.

Unique in its trendy location, the huge studio/showroom/store features cement floors; Rochon’s own highly imaginative furniture line, vignettes of globally collected antique and contemporary pieces, leathers and fabrics; an everchanging art show; and the designer’s much-heralded The Paint Laboratory (TPL) collection of 500+ richly pigmented, eco-responsible paints.

Rochon is passionate about his work and sharing it with others. “I hope the people who come here will see the soulful beauty of items they’ve never encountered before. To learn things. To ‘find’ themselves,” he reveals.


Rocky Rochon Paint is sold through the Los Angeles and Seattle showrooms.

Whatever the project, Rochon focuses beyond the aesthetic, noting, “My process has always involved helping people to dig deep.” That is, to create interiors that reflect how the client wants to feel. Rochon’s guiding rule for choosing paint colors is simple: “Don’t focus on how you want a room to look, but how you want it to feel.” Rochon explains his theory further, adding, “We ask them to respond – love, hate, soothed – to many different images independent of their project. This provides us with insight into their underlying aesthetics, often a surprise.”


The bespoke Geometry Daybed; part of Rochon’s Body Parts collection, is upholstered in faux mink.

With paint such an integral part of his work, “setting the stage for everything,” Rochon took on the age-old problem of how paint color changes with shifts in light by studying “metamerism,” or the science of the reflection of light and its impact on color’s appearance. Thanks to TPL’s findings, his in-house colorists now “build” colors in light booths they invented, reproducing the lighting where the colors will be used. “Custom engineering” they call it. They can also replicate colors.

“Knowledge comes from experience,” assures Rochon. He more than willingly shares his.

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