Intelligent Spaces. Elevated Experience.
Cool Hive Designs creates emotionally resonant environments that provide improved comfort, strengthen identity, and increase long-term value.
Pictured: CHD Glass banister providing improved clerestory privacy through customizable etched-effect panels mirroring the Victorian moldings, complemented by CHD designed skylight filter with discreet integrated LED lighting. Surrounding area includes molding and lighting updates.
Re-imagining Existing Spaces for the Future
CHD designs environments that shape emotion, behavior, connection, and possibility. Balancing beauty, functionality, atmosphere, and sustainable thinking, CHD creates spaces that feel timeless, grounded, and deeply livable.
Pictured: A kitchen transformation that elevates the space through refined material updates, integrated sliding panels, layered lighting, and a functional eat-in island — all while preserving the existing footprint, flooring, and major appliances to support cost-conscious renovation goals. The design includes interior cabinet motion-sensing lighting and durable commercial-grade surfaces within a warm, inviting environment designed for adaptive multi-use living.
How Do You Want to Live Next?
Let’s Explore the Best Design Solutions for Your Future
CHD re-imagines spaces around the way people truly want to live going forward — balancing comfort, atmosphere, functionality, and long-term value. We create intelligently refined environments designed to feel timeless, grounded, and deeply livable while adapting to changing lifestyles and future needs.
Our work is particularly focused on adaptive reuse, evolving material technologies, and future-aware systems that support resilience, sustainability, and flexible modern living — without compromising warmth, beauty, or human experience.
Pictured: A flexible multi-use room designed to transition seamlessly from bistro lounge to formal dining to conference space, featuring a concealed built-in wet bar integrated within the rear closet. CHD provides detailed room-specific spec sheets to support cohesive design direction, sourcing, budgeting, and streamlined project coordination.
Providing Creative Direction & Design Strategy
With decades of experience spanning design, fabrication, branding, luxury products, hospitality, and cultural projects, CHD approaches each project with both aesthetic sensitivity and strategic vision. Led by Daisy Carlson, Cool Hive Designs blends spatial design, creative direction, adaptive reuse, hospitality thinking, and visual storytelling to create distinctive, future-focused environments for contemporary living.
Pictured: Re-imagined office as a refined fireplace lounge, illustrating CHD’s use of accurate visualizations to support collaborative decision-making, atmosphere development, and cost-conscious design planning.
Tailored Design Services
Providing thoughtful design strategy focused on adaptive reuse, elevated living, social and work environments, visual identity, and long-term value creation through cohesive, future-oriented spaces.
- Strategic Creative Direction
- Design Consulting
- Interior Spatial Planning
- Design Adaptive Reuse & Repositioning
- Value-Oriented Design Strategy
- Interior & Exterior Design Direction
- Hospitality, Residential & Live/Work Environments
- Visual Identity & Sense of Place
- Material, Color & Finish Strategy Furnishing,
- Styling & Sourcing
- Brand & Product Consulting
Featured Project
Fill & Oak — San Francisco
For this Edwardian mixed-use property, CHD focused on elevating tenant experience through refined visual identity, improved circulation, atmosphere, functionality, and long-term value creation. The design approach balanced historical sensitivity with contemporary living and hospitality-inspired environments while strengthening the property’s overall sense of place. Through thoughtful adaptive reuse and repositioning strategies, the project was reimagined to better support modern multi-use living and future tenant appeal.
Pictured: Cool Hive Design rebranded The Center formerly housed within this protected landmark property as Fill & Oak, unifying the Fillmore and Oak Street buildings under a distinctive memorable identity. The repositioning strategy was intended to strengthen sense of place, elevate market perception, improve tenant appeal, and create a more cohesive visual identity for the campus.
Pictured: The main entry hall serving 24 office suites and adjoining public spaces through a central pass-through. Though modest in scale, the space plays an important role in establishing atmosphere and first impression. Neutral tones were selected to create a calm, flexible, and cohesive environment.
Intelligent Spaces. Elevated Experience.
Cool Hive Designs works across residential, hospitality, cultural, and future-focused environments with an emphasis on refinement, emotional intelligence, sustainability, and lasting value.
Design Lead — Daisy Carlson
An award-winning designer with over 30 years of experience, Daisy Carlson brings a refined understanding of color, materials, proportion, and atmosphere to every project. Her work balances timeless elegance with functional, deeply livable environments shaped by decades of experience designing interiors, timeless products, and branded spaces for luxury residences, hospitality settings, retail environments, and design-driven clients.
Known for balancing creative vision with practical execution, Daisy brings a sophisticated understanding of materials, construction, adaptive reuse, and custom fabrication to each project. Her experience includes collaborations connected to more than 3,000 retail locations, renowned Hollywood residences, historic Italian villas, and visual refreshes for iconic institutions and heritage brands including the Uffizi Gallery and Pineider 1774. She has worked on a diverse range of residential and commercial properties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.
Daisy is also the creator of Cool Hive—Making The Planet Cooler , an editorial platform exploring a well-designed, climate-smart future highlighting design, innovation, culture, and climate smart living.
She is additionally recognized for her globally sought-after Daisy Arts leather goods and handcrafted Italian home accessories, celebrated for their craftsmanship, material richness, and enduring sense of style.
Daisy Carlson
T. 415-419-6459
Daisy@CoolHive.com
CHD is your doorway to a more thoughtfully designed future — come on in.
Pictured: A exterior refresh on a protected landmark building, featuring restored railings and steps, updated curb, front and lower-level doors repainted in Raisin as well as a full hardware replacement. Masonry complemented by low-maintenance drought-tolerant landscaping and sculptural California grasses chosen to soften the entry while remaining resilient and water conscious.