Dancer, actress, singer and songwriter Julianne Hough resides in a Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles home that would make a designer proud. Her kitchen is a miracle of creative imagination, a hallowed place from which it is easy to suppose must emerge the most sumptuous feasts.
While filming a live immersive workshop for her fitness brand, KINRGY, Hough, who became a household name thanks to her role as a professional dancer and then judge at ABC’s real dance show, Dancing with the Stars, shared an Instagram post in which she danced in her kitchen, allowing her followers to catch a glimpse of her beautiful and spacious kitchen.
Her open plan kitchen featured white and grey marble countertops, baby blue and green cabinet units, wooden floorboards and even a library ladder so she can reach the top shelf of the cupboards. The kitchen appeared both well designed and very intimate. This is not the first time the dancer has opened her doors to the press. In 2016, she gave a tour of her house to Better Homes & Gardens, explaining that her intent was to create a home that she could feel comfortable in, a safe space that expressed who she is.
Hough designed the kitchen, much as she did the rest of the house, with architect Steve Wunderlich and interior designer Jake Arnold. She has had a passion for design since her childhood in Utah, where she would reimagine her bedroom constantly. She has stated on more than one occasion that she would rather idle away in a furniture store than a clothes shop.
She wanted to give the house a timeless quality, so she eschewed buying trendy items in favour of furnishings and accessories with an aged patina. It is hard to know how old anything is because of this deliberate ambiguity in the age of everything. In addition to that, the whole house is an ode to comfort, a nurturing spirit, natural textures, unvarnished woods, and light, earthy colours.
Rather than being glossy or overtly trendy, everything is intimate, natural, and light. Another quality the house has is flexibility: all the furniture and accessories were picked so that they could be moved around the house seamlessly, never looking out of place anyway.
An example of Hough’s care in designing her kitchen can be seen in her cabinets. She took a long time to settle on a colour, before deciding on creating her own custom blend of baby blue and green. The effect is to accentuate the lighting and make it seem as if the kitchen is open air and by the beach somewhere. The glass-front kitchen cabinets do not have a back, so everyone can easily see right through to the wall. They hang from just beneath the ceiling, which gives them a more elevated feel. The library ladder is placed against the cabinets to make it easy to reach the top shelf.
Hough placed a breakfast nook on one end of her kitchen, with stunning breakfront cabinets that go from floor to ceiling, and work as a hutch pedestal table and gorgeous rattan bistro chairs with white and black woven seats.