Today Architectural Digest is welcomed by 'Pretty Little Liars' star Ashley Benson to tour her playful home in Los Angeles. Designed in 1930 by architect Arthur Kelly, Ashley's home is an Old Hollywood gem–and having had only three owners in over 90s years it's practically untouched. Inspired by her love of Europe and Nancy Meyer’s movies, Ashley enlisted interior designer Nicole Gordon, and architect John Fiorucci to help bring her home into the 21st century. From astronaut wallpaper to the ultimate coastal grandmother kitchen, Benson has created a playful space with something fun hidden around each corner.“I wanted to make each turn and each room—no matter the size—a unique experience.”
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 [door slams]
00:01 - Hi, AD.
00:02 I'm Ashley Benson and welcome to my home.
00:05 - Come on in.
00:07 [upbeat music]
00:09 - So this is the casual living room,
00:25 but it's really my dog's main bedroom, house, kitchen.
00:30 I've always wanted to live in a house
00:33 that felt like I was on permanent vacation.
00:35 When I'm outside, I just feel like I'm in Italy or Barcelona,
00:39 anywhere that kind of puts me away from being in LA,
00:42 and this house really did that for me.
00:44 I just had such a vision.
00:46 I love interior design.
00:47 I worked with Nicole Gordon,
00:49 who's also one of my best friends.
00:50 It was very easy, and John Farace was amazing.
00:53 So one fun fact that I loved
00:55 right when I saw the house originally,
00:57 Arthur Kelly, who did the Playboy Mansion,
00:59 also built this house in 1930,
01:02 and I thought that was just a very cool piece of history,
01:05 and I think I was the third owner of this house,
01:08 which is very rare.
01:10 It just felt very special and timeless.
01:12 [upbeat music]
01:15 A kitchen is everything to me.
01:20 Nancy Meyers is one of my favorite directors ever.
01:24 If you know her movies, which I'm sure you do,
01:27 she has the best kitchens.
01:28 Like, her interiors are amazing.
01:30 I wanted my house to feel very Nancy Meyers-esque,
01:34 and so here we are.
01:37 I wanted a very big island.
01:38 I love to entertain.
01:39 A lot of my free time that I have on the weekends,
01:42 I have all of my friends come over.
01:43 They'll come over with what dish they're gonna make,
01:46 and we just spend a lot of time in here.
01:48 This is probably the most used room of my house.
01:51 The one thing I wanted, I was like,
01:52 I need to somehow figure out how I can make this stove
01:57 in my kitchen, and also one of these,
02:01 'cause it looks like I know how to cook,
02:02 and I'm a professional chef.
02:03 I have a bunch of these pans,
02:05 and no, I've never used them, and I never will.
02:08 I've collected a bunch of pots and pans and kettles
02:11 and stuff from Paris, London, Geneva, Canada,
02:14 kind of all over.
02:16 I was gonna put a big light above the island,
02:20 but this is far more interesting.
02:22 I just think it looks very pretty.
02:24 I make all of my friends coffee every morning
02:27 if they're over.
02:28 If not, I'll make myself coffee,
02:30 and believe it or not, I actually do keep pastries in here
02:34 all the time just because I feel like it looks pretty,
02:37 and it just makes me in a really great mood.
02:40 This is not just for show.
02:41 This is for show, but I really always do have
02:44 little donuts or bread, croissants, all the things
02:49 just because I wanna look like I know
02:51 what I'm doing in here.
02:52 [upbeat jazz music]
02:55 This is my dining room.
02:58 Before, it was all white, and it just had a piano in here.
03:03 I kind of liked the idea of having a dining room
03:06 away from my kitchen, and I made these doors
03:11 be able to open to the backyard and the grass
03:14 so my dogs can go out.
03:16 We can get fresh air.
03:17 I have a fireplace here, which I redid into gold,
03:20 a gold fireplace, which I loved,
03:23 and having a black dining room I thought was very cool.
03:27 It felt very Parisian to me in a sense,
03:30 but yeah, in the winter, I literally have this fire going
03:35 at all times.
03:36 My friends come over.
03:37 We play games, and we just eat and sit here for hours.
03:42 I have music put on in here, and it's just a really nice
03:45 room to kind of relax in.
03:47 [upbeat jazz music]
03:50 So this is my formal living room.
03:53 I wanted to have a space that felt very adult
03:57 and just classy, elegant, and somewhere for people
04:02 to just be able to sit down, talk, for me to read a book,
04:06 enjoy the fire, have coffee, tea, a glass of wine,
04:09 whatever that may be.
04:11 Every time I went into people's houses,
04:13 and I was like, "You don't have a TV?
04:14 "That's so crazy," but it just feels so much more mature.
04:19 I just liked a grand room without anything like that,
04:23 but I also wanted to have kind of a home theater room.
04:28 Being able to watch films and then having this fire,
04:31 it's just amazing.
04:33 [upbeat jazz music]
04:36 So right now we're in my backyard,
04:43 which I actually use as my front yard, my front entrance.
04:48 We have my pool here.
04:51 We have these beautiful blue tiles.
04:53 The elevated hot tub was really important for me,
04:56 and the water flows down when you're in it.
04:58 And yeah, it's just very cozy, and every time I'm out here,
05:01 I just feel like I'm on vacation.
05:03 I feel like I'm in Cabo, and then also Italy
05:06 with all the flowers and stuff.
05:08 But yeah, it's very relaxing out here.
05:09 This is Mason.
05:11 Mason is Nicole Gordon's dog who also did my house.
05:15 Love you, Nicole.
05:16 But Mason comes over all the time.
05:17 He's the one creature that goes in my pool
05:20 more than I do or my friends.
05:22 If he comes into my house, he goes right through the gate,
05:24 jumps in the pool, and he's there for hours.
05:26 Hey, this is what we do on the weekends.
05:28 Ready?
05:29 Yeah, go.
05:30 He also uses steps, too.
05:33 Good boy, Macy.
05:35 Good boy, Macy.
05:37 [upbeat music]
05:40 I feel like because I travel so much
05:45 and I'm constantly living in hotels,
05:49 I wanted my bedroom to feel like that.
05:53 I love small spaces and to feel very cozy.
05:56 And I got inspired by one hotel in Amsterdam
06:00 that had weird cages for the bathrooms.
06:03 And so I thought of the idea of
06:05 why not make my bathrooms in weird caged rooms?
06:08 So here we are.
06:09 This copper tub was very important to me.
06:11 I wanted something that was different, hence this.
06:16 I'm a very big bath person.
06:18 The first thing I do when I wake up is take a bath,
06:21 regardless of if I have time or not.
06:24 I go in here.
06:25 I put a little TV in here.
06:27 This was an amazing piece.
06:30 It's also a steam room, which I really wanted.
06:35 If I'm ever feeling sick or worn down or just tired,
06:38 I'll sit in here for another hour or two.
06:40 And then if you go over on this side,
06:43 this just feels very open, very girly.
06:46 These sconces actually are original to the house.
06:50 And I think a lot of the sconces in my bedroom are as well.
06:53 But to kind of tie that in with my bathroom,
06:56 I picked this mirror that's kind of covering up
06:59 a little window there.
07:00 [upbeat music]
07:02 This is where I sleep.
07:07 I was obsessed with blush and like a mustardy yellow
07:12 and a navy situation.
07:13 I didn't know how we would make it work, but we did.
07:17 These floating little nightstands are amazing and so handy.
07:21 And it just looks more clean.
07:22 I love having a clean kind of aesthetic.
07:24 I don't like anything busy.
07:27 So it just worked very well having these sconces right here,
07:30 these little lamps.
07:31 I think it's such a nice touch.
07:33 But yeah, just very feminine and tidy
07:35 and nothing too crazy busy.
07:38 And it just, again, feels like a really nice hotel room.
07:40 I also have an original fireplace,
07:43 which I love putting on the fire at night.
07:46 And I still do, even in the summer, I'll have it blasting.
07:49 I go to bed, it makes you just fall asleep very easily.
07:52 And then why not have a bar in your bedroom?
07:56 So again, it just felt like I was away somewhere in a hotel.
08:01 And I know that sounds kind of crazy, but you know, why not?
08:06 Also, it's mainly just for my candy.
08:11 [upbeat music]
08:18 I wanted my closet to kind of flow with my bathroom.
08:23 So this originally, all of this was a guest room
08:27 and there wasn't a lot of closet space in the house.
08:31 So I got to kind of build my dream closet
08:34 and I felt like I was in a department store,
08:39 but still my house.
08:41 This is like one of my favorite things ever.
08:43 I always dreamed of having a closet with little lights in it
08:46 and kind of being able to see everything.
08:48 This is actually a photo that Keegan Allen took
08:51 who played Toby on "Pretty Little Liars."
08:53 He framed this for me.
08:56 That's in the Holland.
08:57 I think we were, I think I was like 24
08:59 and I was very into photography at the time.
09:01 And I just thought it looked very cute in this closet.
09:05 So thanks Keegan.
09:06 I had the laundry room built in this little secret door.
09:14 This laundry room is so much fun.
09:17 First of all, this wallpaper,
09:19 I wanted to do the laundry room in a very weird print.
09:22 And for some reason I was really into aliens
09:25 at the time and space.
09:27 So I was like, what can I find that has that sort of element
09:31 and why not put it in the laundry room?
09:34 My friend, Christina is an amazing organizer
09:36 and she did my laundry room for me.
09:39 So it just also looks like a store.
09:41 It's just a very fun room for me to be in
09:44 and a lot of space to do my laundry,
09:46 steam clothes, fold the clothes, all the things.
09:49 And I love doing laundry.
09:50 So I just wanted to make this space
09:52 kind of a fun room for me to be in.
09:54 This is going into one of my guest bedrooms
09:58 and this entire room is all original.
10:02 It kind of reminded me of Chateau Marmont,
10:04 which I did spend a lot of time in, in my early twenties.
10:07 I lived there for a bit.
10:09 So this was kind of paying homage to that.
10:12 And I just thought it was so beautiful
10:14 and I was happy to not have to redo another room
10:16 and to be able to leave some of the original pieces here.
10:19 This is one of my favorite guest rooms.
10:27 It feels like Beauty and the Beast to me.
10:30 I love libraries and we stained all this wood
10:35 to be a bit darker.
10:36 And I just wanted to fill it with different memories.
10:39 A lot of my family pictures are here,
10:43 different projects I've worked on, a lot of memorabilia.
10:46 I love collecting records.
10:49 So I have a lot of my records here on these shelves.
10:52 And I think also it's just so peaceful.
10:55 The sunset from this room is incredible.
10:59 [upbeat music]
11:02 We're on our way to the speakeasy, but before that,
11:10 this was actually the original furnace in the house.
11:12 We sealed it shut, painted it gold.
11:16 I thought it was a really cool piece to leave here.
11:21 And if you walk this way,
11:22 I'll just see a much younger me right there.
11:27 For Spring Breakers.
11:28 This is my speakeasy.
11:31 I'll take you up this way to the bar.
11:34 I spend a lot of time in here.
11:39 Believe it or not, I do a lot of my self tapes
11:41 for auditions in this room.
11:43 So it's not only a bar, but also a workspace.
11:47 I got inspired by Hotel Coste.
11:49 It's one of my favorite hotels in Paris.
11:51 They have a lot of black marble, black walls,
11:55 deep red accent walls.
11:57 All of their rooms in the hotel are red velvet.
12:01 And I'm just obsessed with that hotel.
12:04 The wallpaper on the ceiling, it looks like flowers.
12:08 But if you look close enough,
12:09 you might see something a little different.
12:12 We don't have to go into details, but you know.
12:14 And then also this mirrored ceiling, I thought was very fun.
12:18 Just to kind of play off of the mirrored background
12:22 of the bar.
12:23 It's normally all red lights.
12:25 I change all these sconces to red light.
12:28 I put music on and I'll be down here for hours
12:31 with my friends or just alone.
12:32 And I find it actually a very creative space for me.
12:35 During COVID, I mastered an espresso martini.
12:40 So that's one of my faves.
12:42 Try to do better at making good cocktails.
12:46 I just pour things in and hopefully it tastes good.
12:48 [upbeat music]
12:51 Thanks for coming over and hanging out with me.
13:06 I hope you enjoyed the house,
13:08 but now I want some alone time.
13:09 So get out.
13:11 Bye.
13:12 [upbeat music]
13:14 (sad violin music)