Known for her spunky, free-spirited style, Academy Award-winning actress Diane Keaton fearlessly approaches projects with zest and flair. The accomplished director, producer, and star of Annie Hall, The Godfather, and countless other movies, brings this same passion to interior design. Keaton, age 72, also renovates homes for fun. For the last two decades, she has redesigned and sold a variety of houses in styles from Spanish Colonial Revival to contemporary Lloyd Wright.
Her latest project is the place she calls home: a spacious, light-filled, 8,000-sq.-ft. residence in the Sullivan Canyon area of Los Angeles. A divergence from her previous designs, Keaton’s home is highly textural, featuring rustic wood flooring, slabs of concrete, raw metal accents, and brick — lots of it. She detailed the project into book form, creating The House That Pinterest Built, which offers readers a style guide and how-to manual for imagining their own homes. The title says it all.
Like many consumers, Keaton combed Pinterest to find inspirational looks to adapt for each room. “I’m a very visual person,” she said in her keynote presentation at the Dallas Market Center during the January Total Home + Gift Market.
For Keaton, the journey of creating a dream home – which she compared to the journey of life – is best tackled bit by bit. If you can’t renovate a whole house all at once, she advised starting with something easier to accomplish, like picking out wallpaper. She encouraged the audience to have fun with the process, to grab ideas, and experiment.
“Home is where you live and play,” she noted. “It’s where you evolve and experiment and entertain your dreams. So, have fun with them, have fun with your life, and especially have fun making your home your home.”
Among the most notable elements Keaton chose for her home were soaring ceilings defined by wood beams, skylights, and clerestory windows that filter natural light throughout each room. “Light is key. Light is the most important thing in the home. It’s like heaven,” Keaton said, gesturing upward toward the 16-story World Trade Center atrium’s glass ceiling above for emphasis. To illuminate her generously proportioned kitchen, Keaton chose over-scaled, bell pendants in a soft gray finish for their simplicity and Industrial ambiance.
Keaton’s entire home is a study in grayscale, with a color scheme of black, white and gray. “I’d rather color the house with interesting people. People are the color in my home and make it come alive,” she explained.
The presentation included a slide show of images she found on Pinterest followed by photographs of how she adapted each look to her home, which took three-and-a half years to complete. Describing her book, Keaton stated, “This book is an example of a home made from the gifts of other people’s addictive yearnings for the perfect home…It illustrates my choices of your choices. Who knows, you might find one of your pins here. You might think, ‘Hey that’s my kitchen. She copied my kitchen.’ But the truth is, as much as I tried, I could never entirely recreate the photograph of a kitchen that led the way to the journey that brought me here. No one can.”
After the talk, Keaton answered questions from the audience, and signed copies of her book, published by Rizzoli, in the Aidan Gray showroom.
Randal Weeks, owner of Aidan Gray said, “The House That Pinterest Built is such an inspiring book because it shows that even an icon like Diane Keaton searches Pinterest for inspiration to create her dream home. We felt it was a perfect partnership for us because we design our products to be all about the details, and this book is details, details, details. No corner was left undone!”
