If you ever feel bored of your room decorations, or need inspiration for the future mansion you plan to live in—Architectural Digest’s “Open Home” series may be of interest for you. Architectural Digest, an interior designing and landscaping magazine, has a YouTube channel where they step into celebrity homes and follow a home tour given by said celebrity. Some of these homes are extravagant in a good way that makes you so incredibly jealous, some are so bad that the tackiness oozes through the screen. You can easily lose a day watching the playlist of all the celebrities that have opened their homes to AD; and I can honestly say that I have before. Watching these tours, it is so hard to refrain from immediately forming an opinion of these homes that have been decorated with the help of world-renowned interior designers and filled with world-renowned decorations. Hearing the stories of exactly how the house came to be a home helped me decide whether that opinion was positive or negative.
Having watched more than a healthy number of these, I have found my favorites. These six, listed below, emerged as houses that would go on my Pinterest board as inspiration. These houses were all decided with my personal taste, design of space, and of course location in mind. I tried to separate the celebrity from the home—I really did; but there is a reason my favorite celebrities are my favorites. Just as I love their movies, shows, and songs, I also love their personalities, which shine through in how they decorate their homes.
6. Lily Aldrige’s Nashville Home
Lily describes her home as “cozy English countryside meets Morocco” and just that description is enough to make you want to get lost in the beauty of the house. Nashville is a recurring theme on this list, and it may be a personal preference but location can always make a home come alive. Lily’s home is family-centered, and the space she has created for her family, like her kids’ room, is so incredibly special.
5. Dakota Johnson’s Green Hollywood Home
All of the internet (including myself) loved Dakota’s Open Door tour. Dakota naturally oozes cool and charm, and we definitely see that cool and charm in her home. Dakota’s home is filled with perfect shades of green, even the set dress limes, and each room felt like one you could curl up and pass beautiful healing time in. Hollywood is certainly a small place because Ryan Murphy was the previous owner of this house. You can trust, however, that Dakota has cleansed this place of the Murphy spirit by bringing her own energy and nature in the most wonderfully cozy way.
4. Dominic West’s Irish Castle
This home is an abode appropriate for royalty, or at least the actor that will be portraying Prince Charles in the new season of The Crown. Guess what, not only is this castle their home but also a hotel where you can stay. Who doesn’t want to spend time frolicking around a castle filled with so much history (going back 800 years), gorgeous decorations, and truly breathtaking surroundings in the Irish countryside? Props to Dominic’s wife, whose ancestral home this is, for designing and tending to this truly incredible space.
3. Aaron Paul’s Idaho Riverside Home
Oh my oh my, if I was able to spend a winter in this home I would simply never leave. It is the coziest home with the most serene views. As Lauren Paul put it, “people can just come here and exhale.” Now that is exactly what you want in a house. All the decorations and the color palette of the house plays wonderfully with the exterior. This home is undoubtedly one of my favorites.
2. Taylor Hill’s Rustic Nashville Home
From the second Taylor opened the door in that dress, I knew this house would be one of my favorites. Taylor took inspiration from Ralph Lauren’s Telluride home (which makes me swoon with both admiration and envy) and decorated the place with pieces from her childhood home and flea/antique markets. Taylor’s location of choice as well as this particular type of rustic, cottage-core house is exactly what I am showing my realtor in 10 years…find me in the woods of Nashville, perhaps a neighbor to Taylor Hill.
1. Sonam Kapoor’s London Home
Saving the best one for last, hands down this is my dream home. From the location (Notting Hill!!!), to the different de Gournay wallpapers in each room, to the quintessential Indian millennial feel of it, I loved every second of this tour, and of course every inch of this home. Yes, I could write a whole paper about why this is so perfect and personal for me. Put in the simplest terms, Sonam has a fashion taste that I have always adored. Combined with the interior designer Rooshand Shroff’s talents, this home was undoubtedly going to be a charmer. If you take a picture of my heart, and also my Pinterest board, it is actually just filled with this home.