Celebrity Homes: You Have To See Inside Cher’s Malibu Home

She’s known as the Goddess of Pop and her celebrity status extends to the interior of her Malibu home. Step inside Cher’s personal retreat and be mesmerised by the grandeur of it all!

Perched on the most perfect bluff in Malibu is an iconic home, a landmark that all who pass recognize as the home of another icon: the Academy Award–winning singer, actor, activist, elephant saviour, and extraordinary talent known to the world as Cher.

The house itself is another of her many accomplishments. Today, it is a zen-like sanctuary filled with museum-quality Asian art and custom-made furnishings, but the story of this magnificent edifice starts years before…

Beauty takes time

It took years for Cher to discover the perfect Malibu location—an idyllic spot, as it happens, that she had driven past countless times, and purchased in 1998. It then took almost five years to transform the magical location high above the Pacific Ocean into the ultimate home.

A reflection of her unique tastes and lifelong interest in architecture and design, the house grew out of years of collecting and travelling. She brought hundreds of tear sheets ripped from countless magazines to the drawing board, and the home’s design makes reference to Venetian palazzos, the great Renaissance villas of Europe, and the Moorish influences of the Alhambra palace.

Only the finest will do

Expert interior designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard is the man behind this immaculate revamp of the current home. Martyn has been consistently named as one of the world’s top 100 interior designers by Architectural Digest, featured permanently in Elle Decor’s A-List, and named one of the top 25 designers by “The Hollywood Reporter”.

Builder Wallace Tutt III led the team in creating the extraordinary 16,000-square-foot mansion, sited to take in the expanse from Point Dume to Santa Monica along the coast and out to Catalina Island. From sunrise to sunset, the huge picture windows offer stunning vistas. “Every room has two different views of the ocean,” Cher says. “This house wraps its arms around you.”

The finest materials were employed: limestone and marble imported from Italy and France, hand-wrought bronze doors, and custom hardware and tiles from Spain and Morocco. An 18th-century Venetian marble balustrade was purchased from William Randolph Hearst’s collection at San Simeon.

Cher originally worked with designer and longtime friend Ron Wilson, and the house has been filled with her own personal touches since the start. About 16 years ago, Martyn Lawrence Bullard was given the opportunity to help update the residence and source many new treasures. Working hand in hand, they reworked all the finishes with her signature style of opulent comfort, theatrical elegance, and a timeless colour palette.

A feast of creativity

Talented artists painted the ceilings with Eastern motifs. They subsequently used hand-distressed mirrors to create walls of reflective magic. Furthermore, beautifully crafted romantic Moroccan-style lighting warms the home. The raw silk-clad walls and drapery in the bedroom were subsequently stenciled using a mixture of tea leaves and coffee grounds blended with umber paint pigments. This, therefore, recreated the idea of traditional henna designs once painted on Cher’s hands during a wedding she attended in India.

Furthermore, the Moroccan Mashrabiya wood panels that encase the private sitting area were hand-carved in Fez, Morocco. “My bedroom has been my sanctuary, my fortress, really my very special place,” Cher says.