Inside Catalina Gonzalez Jorba’s Stunning Spanish-Style Home in Dallas’ Highland Park

Catalina Gonzalez Jorba, founder of children’s clothing brand Dondolo, asked Sees Design to imagine interiors that told her family’s story. Their vibrant Spanish-style house in Highland Park is a blueprint to her heart, layered with color, pattern, and miles of hand-painted scenic wallpapers.

“I wanted our house to tell a story,” Catalina Gonzalez Jorba says of the Spanish-style residence in Highland Park she shares with her husband, Santiago Jorba, and their four boys. “It’s the story of our family, how we live; we are lovers of color and cultures, of international travel.”

Originally from Colombia, Gonzalez Jorba is the founder of Dondolo, a line of children’s clothing hand-made in Colombia that supports social causes empowering mothers and children. Her husband is a private equity real estate investor and founder of Creu Capital. They met while students at SMU, married in Cartagena in 2009, and are teaching their active boys, ages 4 to 13, to appreciate and respect a beautifully furnished home. The family’s art collection, sourced with the assistance of former Dallas Museum of Art curator Temple Shipley, focuses on works by living women artists.

“I believe the boys should love and live around sophisticated and elegant things, and being inspired by women artists is an important part of that awareness,” Gonzalez Jorba says.

Sees Design and Briggs Architecture & Design collaborated on the renovation of the two-story house, which the Jorbas purchased in 2020. The builder was Pendragon Construction, one of Santiago’s companies. Principal architect Harris W. Briggs designed a 3,000-square-foot addition to the house along with arched window moldings and green-painted persianas (or shutters) — all key exterior elements of traditional Spanish homes. The Jorbas entertain often, so a new second front door reserved for visitors provides a sense of occasion and formality. Inside, there are gracious arches, classical columns, and yard upon yard of hand-painted scenic wallpapers.

Almost every room in the house is covered in a different wallpaper customized for the space.

“If you travel to Europe, you’ll always see old homes with different wallpaper in every room, and so the personality of the room changes,” Gonzalez Jorba says.

The challenge at home was how to keep it cohesive, but she had a bit of an advantage: The Dondolo line is beloved for pretty florals and bright hues, and as a clothing designer, she was already expert at blending patterns and colors. Sara See, a textiles specialist at Sees Design and wife of designer Corbin See, helped guide her choices.

Tropical scenic panels by Gracie were installed in the entryway, customized with the kind of flora you’d find in Texas, such as succulents and blooming hydrangeas in lieu of palm trees.

“The fact that Catalina wanted to do a two-story installation of Gracie wallpaper in the entryway was so exciting because it’s rare that you get a client who understands it,” Sara says.

In the study, you’ll find The Colony wallpaper from de Gournay, a lavish print that appears in the lobby of the famed Colony Palm Beach hotel, but with bespoke tweaks. Pink flamingos were replaced with blue herons, wading birds commonly found in Texas with gray-blue plumage that perfectly matches a large painting in the room. De Gournay’s silver metallic silk wallpaper in the main bedroom is hand-painted with subtle birds and blossoms, a design inspired by a set of 18th-century panels displayed in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

“I love birds so much, and they make the wallpapers in our house very special,” Gonzalez Jorba says.

Corbin See and his brother, Ross — principals and partners in the family’s design firm — focused on the interior architecture and furnishings, working hand-in-hand with Sara See on pattern and color for the wallpaper and fabrics.

“We try to strike the right amount of tension between all these different elements,” she says.

The contemporary Murano chandelier from Legacy Antiques in the dining room was one of the first pieces purchased for the house.

“Catalina and I went shopping one day, and we both loved the scale of it,” Corbin remembers. “She wanted something that you can see from the entryway, a focal point for right when you walked in the door.”

The entry’s rustic black-and-white marble floor and intricate Chippendale-inspired wrought-iron staircase were Gonzalez Jorba’s ideas. They, along with an antique Chinese art deco rug that Corbin found, help balance the bold statement of the wallpaper.

Special design elements reference Santiago’s Spanish heritage, including a custom crystal chandelier by Paul Ferrante in the shape of a Spanish galleon for the breakfast room.

Corbin says, “I’d always wanted to use one of Paul Ferrante’s ship chandeliers, and the moment Catalina saw it, she was, like, ‘We absolutely have to have it.’ And that Zak+Fox constellation sky wallpaper on the ceiling above it finishes the narrative.”

As a child, Santiago spent a lot of time at his grandfather’s house in Spain, which was decorated with a lot of antique Delft tile, Gonzalez Jorba recalls. Corbin found a manufacturer in the Netherlands to reproduce the old tile for the Jorbas’ new kitchen backsplash and a fireplace in the adjoining sitting room. An artist at the Dutch company personalized the tiles with drawings of their boys.

Although the interiors speak to Gonzalez Jorba’s feminine style, they’re balanced to reflect the masculine side of the family. In the living room, the brown-lacquer paneling and shelves, antique marble fireplace, and leopard-print Stark carpeting are robust counterpoints to ladylike slipper chairs upholstered in Rose Cumming floral chintz. And a plump brown leather sofa in the sitting area off the kitchen is designed with the boys in mind. A playroom was created upstairs, but nothing in the house is off-limits, including the formal dining room with walls daringly covered in pale-pink silk and chairs redone in silk Fortuny fabric.

“Fortuny is not for the faint of heart, because as we all know, it’s really special,” Sara says. “This fabric is also a somewhat light color, but Catalina did not stray from her decision to use it. She loved the idea.”

Pink is clearly one of Gonzalez Jorba’s favorite colors — her Dondolo collections run the gamut from blush to pomegranate and fuchsia — so the Sees team helped guide her to subtle interpretations for the house’s interiors. The Colony wallpaper by de Gournay in soft pink sets the tone for her study, along with an abaca-fiber rug by Patterson Flynn, dyed an understated rose.

“The study is definitely feminine and very pink, but it’s not too sweet,” Corbin says.

A tufted armchair’s blush pinstripe fabric is given some edge with acid-green bows, and the room’s millwork is painted in Farrow & Ball Sulking Room Pink, which has a plummy-brown undertone.

The study perfectly encapsulates Gonzalez Jorba’s love of color and unusual details, but the entire house is a reflection of her heart.

Corbin says, “It’s about what moves her; it’s what inspires and drives her. She is the muse.”

Interior design Sees Design. Architecture Briggs Architecture & Design.