Zooey Deschanel’s new home is overflowing with bespoke design flourishes. The actor’s upholstered L-shaped sofa was custom-made, as was the marble mantelpiece. Her bed, kitchen hood, terrace trellises and various lampshades are all custom, too.
Perhaps that’s just what happens when you buy a home with a man famed for transforming fixer-uppers as one half of the Canadian TV show “Property Brothers.”
Deschanel’s fiancé Jonathan Scott is, along with his twin brother Drew, the face of interior design and home renovation on cable’s HGTV. The presenter also co-owns a magazine, production company, furnishing lines, how-to book series and YouTube channel all dedicated to one thing: helping people build their dream homes. Now it was his turn.
“He won’t stop until everything is perfect,” Deschanel told Architectural Digest as the pair opened the doors of their Manhattan duplex for the magazine’s forthcoming November issue. “And anything I can think of, he can execute.”
The result is a meticulously curated home that balances old-world charm with the kind of quaint touches one might expect from a star renowned for twee vintage fashion and quirky roles in “500 Days of Summer,” “Elf” and the long-running sitcom “New Girl.”
“The first thing they told me was, ‘Nothing modern. We want a sense of history and we love color,’” said the couple’s interiors collaborator Young Huh, a New York-based designer who also spoke to Architectural Digest for the feature.
Allusions to history are found across the Georgian-inspired property, from decorative pilasters to the crown molding that lines its palatially high ceilings. There’s literal heritage, too, in the form of antique chairs dating back to the reign of Britain’s George III (and now upholstered in deep purple velvet).
The apartment building itself is slightly newer, dating to the turn of the 20th century. Deschanel and Scott, who met while filming a “Carpool Karaoke” segment for “The Late Late Show with James Corden” in 2019, recalled the duplex being in a sorry state when they first viewed it that year.
“It was totally raw and stripped down, like an abandoned 1980s office building,” said Scott. “It was definitely sketch,” Deschanel added.
Almost six years later, the home is completely transformed. Floral and botanical patterns are a recurring theme, from the chintz sofas to the colorful hollyhock wallpaper that greets visitors at a private elevator entrance. Above the hardwood dining room, a bouquet of Murano glass roses spills out from a whimsical Bottega Veneziana chandelier.
These florals rub up against embroidered wall coverings, striped curtains and flashes of marble. It seems no surface was left untouched by their interior designer. “Young is brilliant with maximalist style and she really got my aesthetic,” Deschanel told Architectural Digest, which last month published a coffee table book “AD at Home,” featuring almost 70 celebrity homes. “It takes a lot of skill to mix patterns and textures and make them feel harmonious.”
Elsewhere, in a pistachio-colored family room, two recessed bookshelves flank a large fireplace. Three separate terraces meanwhile offer sunlit outdoor spaces. There’s also a kids’ room equipped with bunk beds for Deschanel’s two children, 10-year-old Elsie and 8-year-old Charlie, from her former marriage to Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard.
For now, however, the Manhattan apartment will only serve as the family’s East Coast pied-à-terre, not their main residence. Deschanel hails from Los Angeles (earlier this year, her childhood home was in Pacific Palisades was destroyed by the wildfires that devastated the city), where she and Scott bought — and, of course, renovated — a huge 1930s Georgian revival home in the leafy Brentwood neighborhood.