The Feeling of Home: Sommer in San Francisco

Before Sommer was a shop, it was a way of seeing. Founder Madeleine Shields had spent years working as an interior stylist before launching the project as an online shop in 2021. Following the birth of her daughter Romy, she envisioned a place built around what she calls “pieces of a home”—a thoughtful collection of furniture, clothing, jewelry, and objects by independent designers and brands.

The name reaches back even further: Shields was born in Norway before her family returned to California, spending nearly every summer visiting relatives along Norway’s southern archipelago. Those trips—and in particular the modest summer cottage her grandfather built there in the 1960s—became her earliest understanding of home. Sommer, the Norwegian word for summer, is less a reference to the season than to that feeling of return.

That vision first took physical form in a 250-square-foot shop in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights, opened in 2024 as a temporary experiment. This spring, Sommer found a more permanent home on Linden Street in Hayes Valley, in what was once a residential garage and later an auto repair shop. Working with designer Hana Mattingly of Innen Studio and woodworker David Flatow of Flatow Furniture, Shields transformed the simple industrial shell into a warm, quietly residential interior with custom cherry furnishings, polished concrete floors, and soft lighting.

Shields doesn’t see the space as complete. “I view our space like a home,” she says. “A space that will never be completely finished and will always be evolving.” The result is a jewel box of a shop that feels settled, but never static.

Photography by Eli Blanton for Sommer.

For more of our favorite shop interiors, see our posts:

• Our Curated Abode: A Hardware to Housewares DIY Store in Kent, England
• Studio of the Week: Œuvres Sensibles Shop and Atelier in Marseille
• Shoppers Diary: Sanne Hop’s Creative Atelier in Amsterdam