Entering the home of entertaining guru and celebrity chef Lulu Powers is like stepping into a world where creativity reigns supreme. “It’s a happy house,” says the Connecticut native of the 1927 West Hollywood bungalow she shares with her photographer husband, Stephen Danelian. With a growing entertaining empire, Powers has a free-spirited and fun-loving approach to food and hosting that beautifully translates into her decorating choices, with bold colors and daring wallpapers around every corner. It’s the offhanded ease with which Powers pulls everything together, though, that really sets her home apart. “There is no rhyme or reason to how I do things, even in my cooking,” she says. “If I think it will look or taste good I just add it.”
Filling an unused corner of the living room with stacks of books creates an eye-catching display that’s easy to move when it comes time to mix up the furniture arrangement.
Living Room
Having lived in her house for 20 years, Lulu has become a master at reinventing her interiors, which may explain her fearlessness when it comes to color. “I just picked a color from our living room rug, and I happen to love blue,” she says of Benjamin Moore’s Bainbridge Blue, the vibrant hue she chose for the walls. An oversize mirror from her husband’s bachelor days anchors Lulu’s collection of black-and-white photography, which she’s been amassing since she was 16. “If I like it, I get it,” she says simply of her collecting strategy. After a friend cast them off, Lulu recovered the pair of chairs in her living room using orange velvet curtain panels she found at Ikea and stained the legs a dark brown to up the elegance. “The possibilities are so endless if you think outside the box,” she says.
As a genius birthday present for her “backgammon fanatic” husband, Lulu completely refurbished an old game table she found in a neighbor’s garage. One flip of the backgammon board and the surface becomes a fully functioning desk.
An antique bust, sporting a hat and glasses owned by Lulu’s late father, adds a bit of gravitas and is a killer conversation starter on her ready-to-serve bar. An oversize tray and mix-and-match glassware transform an otherwise ordinary console table into entertaining central.
Entryway
To add impact to the house’s diminutive entryway, Lulu papered the walls in Cole & Son’s Lilac Dove wallpaper, which she discovered at Walnut Wallpaper, her go-to source for all the wallpaper in her home. Keeping with her eclectic style, Lulu tempered the glitz of the wallpaper’s silver sheen with a rustic vintage console and an antique rug.
Grouping together various silver accessories, accented with a few welcome bits of tarnish, makes an otherwise haphazard grouping feel cohesive. Lulu has a special fondness for her husband’s collection of plaster eggs, safely stored in a vintage metal bowl.
Papering built-in doors visually integrates them into the walls so that they all but disappear. A small oil painting, cleverly hung from the cupboard doorknobs, completes the camouflaged effect and is a cinch to remove.
Breakfast Nook
Lulu refers to the small breakfast nook off the kitchen as “the best room in the house. It’s where we start our mornings and recap our days, and when people come over it’s always where they end up.” At first Lulu was looking to change out the room’s formerly yellow walls with a Beverly Hills Hotel-style paper, but once she saw this Palmeral print by House of Hackney, Lulu was sold. She had new green slipcovers made for the comfy armchairs and turned what was once a brightly patterned scarf into two small accent pillows to bring in a bit of the blue from the walls. “It’s our hang place,” she says.
Master Bedroom and Bath
“Coziness” was the goal for the master bedroom, which Lulu masterfully achieved by applying a textural grass cloth to the walls and repeating a Greek key pattern to “tie the room together.” Despite its punctuations of orange and blue, this is the most subdued room in the house. As for the master bath, Lulu once again skirts convention by using not only wallpaper in this notoriously damp environment but also hanging a pricey photograph in the space. “It makes me happy when I’m taking a bath to look at it,” says Lulu, whose ideal bath includes Epson salts, lavender, and a few drops of neroli oil. “My motto is ‘You only live once.’”
Covering only a portion of the wall in Osborne & Little’s Palais Chinois keeps the room feeling light and airy. A petite mirror, scored at a New York antiques shop by Lulu’s husband, may not be functional, but it makes the space feel finished.
Guest Room
In the guest bedroom, Lulu chose a traditional Pierre Deux toile pattern, but the overall effect feels more playful than proper thanks in part of the portrait hanging above the bed. “It’s from an antiques market in Seattle, and I bought it for $125. It’s genius,” she says. “So many people ask me if they can buy it from me. My version of the Mona Lisa!” As a consummate hostess herself, Lulu has a ready opinion when it comes to what a good guest room should include: “A bottle filled with water and a glass over it, a pad and pen, good lighting so your guests can read, a comfortable bed, and a good-smelling candle.”
Join the Discussion