Midcentury Palm Springs has attracted plenty of revival projects, but few have leaned so deliberately into the fantasy of the era as the Sands Hotel & Spa in Indian Wells, where a 1950s motor lodge was transformed by designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard into something closer to a Hollywood dream of the desert than a faithful restoration. The pink stucco facades, terracotta barrel-tile rooflines, and date palms framing the pool deck — striped cabanas in graphic black and white anchoring the scene — telegraph the Rat Pack era with obvious pleasure, while the 47 rooms layer that nostalgia with enough contemporary comfort to keep it from feeling like a theme park. Inside, Bullard's signature maximalism finds a disciplined channel: arched headboards upholstered in indigo block-print fabric, shibori-style quilts, fretwork bar cabinets painted white, and starburst brass ceiling pendants that nod to the atomic age without straining for irony. The restaurant interior doubles down with green-and-white checkered tile floors, rattan bistro chairs, pink banquette seating, and walls hung salon-style with vintage Palm Springs ephemera — magazine covers, poolside photography, framed mirrors in gilded and bamboo frames. On warm evenings the glazed wall folds back entirely, collapsing the boundary between bar and desert garden, where a tiled fire pit and clipped agaves complete what Bullard has always done best: interiors that feel genuinely lived in rather than merely curated.

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