Inside Bill Kaulitz’s Mid-Century Modern Hollywood Home - Open Door - Architectural Digest

Hi, AD. Oh my God, I always wanted to say that. Salvia, I'm Bill. Welcome to my California home. Come on in. I got very lucky because I got a architectural original. So Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the most amazing designers, I'm such a big fan, he actually drew the first outlay of the house. So he basically designed it. And then Lloyd Wright, his son, finished it off. So I got best of both worlds in a way. The house needed some love, but I wanted to have everything original and the integrity of the house I didn't want to touch. So we basically just moved in and made it a little nicer. I work with my best friend, Davide Rizzo. He's an interior designer from Germany. Davide said we need signature pieces for the house. So he designed most of the furniture himself and created something that just fits perfectly, that's cozy, modern in a way, and doesn't take away from the original design. Yeah, I feel like the house has such a spirit and I feel like you can tell that there's so much history in here and I love it. Like, I mean, surrounded by nature, it's almost like a tree house in a way, but it has such a good vibe. It's just like an entertaining space. Like everyone's allowed to smoke in my house. That's very European of me. So I have ashtrays around, we drink wine and we sit by the fireplace. I love a good fireplace. That's the best. Okay. She listens so great. Always have a pineapple. That's like my thing. It reminds me of vacation, I guess. These chairs are my actual favorite. These Idra chairs and Davide selected them for me. I love them so much because they're all different. I kind of have everything for everyone here. So that's an important piece of my house because I love to host parties and have people over and everyone loves to drink something different. And like, there's nothing better to me than have a nice, you know, wine at the end of the night and watch a great movie. I wanted this room to feel like a cave, like something very cozy and very intimate and where I can spend my Sundays and watch a nice movie and black out the world and just be by myself. When I moved in here, there was just a tiny little sofa, a couch. And I was like, well, I kind of want to use the amazing shape of that house. And I just kind of want to build something that's very big where everyone can just cuddle and come together. So I had the idea of the built-in sofa. Look, these are like the built-in original lights that you can kind of dim. Everything in my house is on a dimmer. Sometimes I have everything off and just the built-in lights, which is so cozy. Lightning is very important to me. This is Murano glass. Davide found this at like an amazing Italian vintage place and they're all matching. This is such an original piece. I, in the beginning, thought maybe that's kind of boring, but I was like, okay, we need something that's very traditional mid-century. So we got this piece and I love it actually. Like people think I never sit in here and I don't. And then we have this amazing piece, which I love. I think this one speaks for all the stuff that we had to design specifically for the house. So we designed it to fit perfectly in that corner. And this is my Martini art piece. That's the first art piece I ever bought at the LA Freeze. And I saw it and I was like, okay, it's a rotating Martini glass. I need to have it. Welcome in my kitchen that's never been used. I love a kitchen. I'm a kitchen girl. I love to sit here. This is actually where I spend most of my time in the house. Look at this little chair. It's a penny chair. When I'm working, I have my laptop here. I have my coffee here. I have my breakfast here. And I sit here until the sun goes down. So my fridge is very organized always. I love that it looks like a grocery store in a way. There's nothing here that you can really eat. I have an egg or two, and then I have English muffins. That's pretty much it. And I have grapes when I'm feeling good and I feel like I'm in the spirit and I shouldn't order something. Then I cut cheese, which is a big deal for me. That's like cooking. And then I have grapes and crackers. Yeah, that's sometimes my lunch. Lots of champagne. Always needs to be there in case there's a party. And I do hot dogs every once in a while. That's what I have. Sausages. I'm German, what can I tell you? And beers. So everything in the kitchen is original. The only thing we did, we retreated the wood. Even that shape, everything was original. The arches, everything was here. And we just gave it some love. I had to change the stone in here that used to be black. And I decided to go for mint green kind of color. But we also did some research on it because we wanted to use something that Frank Lloyd Wright would have used. When people came back and I said, oh my God, I had renovation. It was so stressful. They walked in and they're like, what did she do? It looks the same. So. Welcome in my most important room, my closet. That used to be Tom's bedroom, my brother. When we bought the house, we originally moved in together and that was his room. And I was like, well, now he's married. He has it all. Now I'm gonna have it all. And I turned it into my closet. So this is actually the closet where I keep all my stuff for work. So for stage or for shooting my show. So that's my fun closet. This is stained glass. I just got that installed and that's inspired by original Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass. And I actually found someone in Los Angeles that has worked on Frank Lloyd Wright houses before and she made that happen for me, which turned out really, really cozy and nice. And I love it. I'm gonna show you my shoe closet. I would love to just tell you guys that I have a thing for bags or jackets or shoes. I have a thing for everything. So I have a lot of shoes. This is always the collection that I'm wearing right now. And then I move stuff out. These are the comfortable shoes I just wear, you know, when I take my doggy out or, you know, when I sit by the pool, just my everyday stuff. I have a thing for Rick Owens shoes. Wearing them right now. And then also have them pretty much in every color. It's crazy. Yeah, they're just very comfortable actually. They don't look like it, but they are. Tom and I wanted a recording studio and this is Tom's favorite room. So he basically comes here every day. I don't have much say in this. He lost that, whatever's going on here, but I decided on the lamps. So these are Murano glass vintage lamps I got from Italy as well. And we wanted to have it cozy and all the woodwork from the original house. So we had carpenters copy the exact diamond shapes in wood of the doors. And I had like these seventies pallets installed just for sound, but I wanted to make everything look like it's been here. And Lloyd Wright and Frank Lloyd Wright had been recording here in the fifties. I started the podcast in here, Tom and I back in the day. And I remember how in COVID, we were just in here being creative, making music, writing songs, writing my book, like kind of everything that's creative and turned into like a big thing in business for us happened in this room. To me, this is where my magic happens. This is where I put down all my vocals for all the important Tokyo Hotel songs and everything that I'm recording I'm doing in here. The only thing I have in here, it's a video music award that we won for best newcomer. What year is that? 2008. And the funny story is we won against Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift. Sorry, guys. Welcome to my bedroom. This is where the magic doesn't happen. And this is where I don't spend much time in, to be honest. I know a lot of people love their bedroom and I love mine as well, but yeah, I don't know. I always fall asleep on the couch. I didn't want to get rid of these beautiful built-ins and I wanted to keep it original. So I needed a smaller bed that actually fits in front of the built-ins. And then I got these amazing lamps. They're Murano glass from Italy. They're vintage as well. And I didn't have a fireplace in this room. So I had this custom made. When I have a fireplace, it's on the entire night. I also don't like a TV that's just there, you know? Like I feel like a TV needs to be hidden. I saw that at a hotel in Sao Paulo and then I was like, okay, I should just have the same thing in my bedroom. So I had the great idea to put a TV behind this mirror wall. Althea gets to sleep in the bed. I was trying for a long time to not have her do it, but now I love it. She sleeps on top of me and it's the best thing in the world. It's a tiny bathroom. And I think people would expect me to have a bigger bathroom, but I love it. It's very cozy and that used to be all wood. So I decided to also turn everything in here into a mirror. So you can see yourself from every side. You can also see yourself when you're doing a little business on the toilet and just look at yourself. And then back here, this is all storage. So I have all my stuff in here. There's also a lot of clothes. And this is the stuff that I'm wearing every day, just more casual. And then I went a little overboard with my faucets. We kept everything exactly like Lloyd Wright designed it back in the day. But then I thought, you know what? The faucets, we can do a little difference. So I found these faucets in Paris at the Ritz-Carlton. That's one of my favorite hotels in the world. And then I was like, you know what? I would love those on. My shower is actually very messy. No, the shower you can enter from two sides, which is kind of interesting. So from the powder room and the guest bathroom, you can enter it from that side. So if you have someone staying over that's taking a shower, you can just surprise them and open the door and join the wetness. We are outside. I'm most proud of this project, actually. That's my pool. And there wasn't a pool here before. This was just a parking space. I always had the idea of like building a pool and make it more inside, outside living and have my doors open. And I wanted something that's very natural looking. And also I built this little, it's called I think a Baja Latch. And I created that for Fia. In case she falls in, she can always get out. And then lastly, I decided to do a beach entry. So she has a nice way to actually go in if she wants to. I love to host parties. I had actually a crazy pool party here with a lot of people and I did have lifeguards as well. They were very hot. They were wearing tiny little swimming pants. I never knew how important a view is until I lived in this place. I'm like, this is the best thing in the world. Like you see the mountains and the snow and you can see the ocean sometimes. And for me, this is so peaceful and I just love to overlook everything. These two palm trees I got from Heidi for, I think it was my birthday. And I always said to her, oh, I wish I had twin palm trees. So she got me these twin palms. They are still very small, but they hopefully grow very nice and tall and they kind of just cuddle with each other. So this is kind of Tom and I, I guess. I hate anything white, no white furniture, no white pillows and everything has a color. And my upbringing in Germany was the opposite of everything that I have here. We lived in a tiny house. We had no money at all and it was very gray and rainy. So basically everything changed for me moving here. And for me, LA is the ultimate freedom. I think this is what I love the most about the city that I felt like I can do whatever I want and I can wear whatever I want. I just found my peace and quiet here. I also wanted to have a little bit of an entertainment place and my brother loves to grill a sausage, very German of him. So he thought like, let's put in a barbecue. I was like, okay. And then also I wanted to enhance my sex life. So I thought I need a jacuzzi. I need like a little bubble bath to go in. Yeah, it's going well, guys. It's working out. So I can recommend that to everyone. AD, thank you so much for stopping by. That was my LA home. Thank you so much for coming. And now I have nothing to do. So get out of here.