Caitlin Villarreal felt giddy the first time she stepped inside the Whitley Heights rental, a storied 1926 Mediterranean-style penthouse with towering ceilings, hand-carved wooden beams and a pair of arched bookcases alongside an oversize fireplace.
“It had good energy,” Villarreal said of the 1,500-square-foot apartment she rents for $5,300 a month in a historic neighborhood where Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin and Bette Davis once lived. “It’s iconic just by standing tall year after year. It has floor-to-ceiling ‘Old Hollywood’ windows that blow open unexpectedly just like in the movies. It doesn’t feel like a rental. It feels like a forever home.”
Even after three days spent cleaning up ash and soot following the devastating Los Angeles fires in January, Villarreal said she was the happiest she’d been in years. “That’s the magic of this home,” she said as her 2-year-old British shorthair cat, Zuse, curled up elegantly on a velvet chair she purchased at the Gramercy Park Hotel liquidation sale.
After 20 years in New York and five in Weston, Conn., Villarreal, who grew up in Granada Hills and attended Crossroads School in Santa Monica, is thrilled to be home in what she calls her divorcee’s oasis. “The past three tenants, myself included, were all going through a divorce,” she said.
And despite going through difficult changes in her personal life, she feels an effervescent glee at finding the perfect place to land. “This neighborhood is everything I didn’t know L.A. could be,” she said of Whitley Heights, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. “Walkable, warm, social, soulful like a raven who tolerates crows, decadent and shockingly green and luscious.” It’s also within walking distance of one of L.A.’s most iconic landmarks. “I just purchased season tickets to the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl,” she said with excitement.
Not only is the stately penthouse the 42-year-old entrepreneur’s home, it’s also headquarters for her fourth startup, Lola & Veranda, a luxury organic bedding subscription service she co-founded.
Buoyed by a new mantra — “I want to live” — she’s refashioned the apartment with repurposed goods from friends, estate sales, flea markets and the Invaluable online auction app. “I don’t shop new,” she said of the habit she developed in Connecticut during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I won’t ever look back.”
Her new apartment, she said, couldn’t be more different from her six-bedroom home in Connecticut, which she and her then-husband purchased during the pandemic. “My Weston home was a modern and minimalist box in the woods,” she said.
Her Los Angeles home still feels modern but with a touch of eclecticism. Colorful textured rugs in purple, blue, orange, pink and red blend with handmade pottery, art and chic glass-top coffee tables. Shag rugs are placed in bathtubs and on Philippe Starck Plexiglas ghost chairs, and in the dining room, Villarreal has paired an emerald-green marble dining room table she found at the Los Angeles-based Decorjois with vintage black leather Knoll chairs and a zebra-skin rug from the Mongers Market flea market.
In Connecticut, Villarreal’s kitchen was outfitted entirely in black matte “like a Moleskine notebook.” Her modest galley kitchen in Los Angeles retains its charming period tile and sky-high cabinets that reach the 14-foot ceiling. A simple white and birch cabinet from Ikea serves as her island. There is no dishwasher, no washer and dryer. “I could care less,” said Villarreal. “I don’t cook.”
With a talented eye for lighting, Villarreal has installed statement pieces throughout the apartment that add warmth and drama, including a glittering 40-inch disco ball that illuminates the living room like a discotheque. A delicate green glass pendant in her bedroom that she found on Invaluable reminds her of Morocco, creating a sense of intimacy and connection with her space. A coral-hued crystal chandelier in her office hangs low, drawing more attention to a room that might otherwise be ignored. She also has discovered the beauty of cheap and chic lighting. “You can transform any room and make it look like a gallery for less than $20,” she said. Significantly improving the appearance of the interiors, Villarreal installed wireless LED spotlights on her artwork and rechargeable battery-operated motion-sensor lights under the kitchen cabinets that turn on when she walks inside. The key to adding warmth, she said, is the addition of Selens dark orange gel filters. “It’s what photographers use.”
There is no television, but if she wants to watch a movie or binge-watch a series, she can remove her Nebula Mars Pro portable movie projector from the copper pan where it is stored on the hearth and behold — the living room is transformed into a screening room.
Shortly after moving back to Los Angeles, Villarreal became a regular at Mickey Hargitay Plants a few miles away and has filled the apartment with enormous trees in ceramic pots, giving the rooms a bohemian feel. This mood is especially pronounced in the living room, where a ficus tree in the center of the room overlooks a low-lying Roche Bobois Missoni Mah Jong sectional, pillows and ottomans. “I’m all about lounging,” she said. “This space will only get squishier over time.”
The lush motif is carried outdoors to the deck off of the kitchen, where the hillside’s palm trees, bougainvillea and citrus provide shade for the dining table and chairs.
Regarding art, Villarreal said she “drops pieces with no rhyme or reason on the floor and eventually hangs them. Art shouldn’t fight its space to be seen or yell at the frame next door for peace and quiet,” she said. “When it works, it works. I’m not a collector; I’m an estate-sale junkie, which makes it way less serious.”
What’s most amazing about Villarreal’s apartment is that you’d never know she recently moved in. The carpets, lighting and houseplants may be new, but the penthouse feels lived-in and familiar, as comforting as her beloved Zuse, who made the trek back to Los Angeles with her. “I had a lot of help from Taskrabbit,” she said laughing.
Along with being a haven for divorcees, the apartment has celebrity cred: “There’s a fair chance Stevie Nicks lived here in ’71,” Villarreal said of the apartment’s glamorous history. (It also was featured in the New York Times’ Home and Garden section in 2011.) The last tenant, an artist, lived in the apartment for six years. “People tend to stay here,” she said. She plans to do the same. “They’re going to have to kick me out of here.”
How she made her historic Hollywood rental feel like her forever home
- “Install your big anchor plants first and furniture second.”
- “Don’t be scared of high-gloss paint; it’s a game-changer in small, impactful spaces like stair railings and bathroom ceilings.”
- “Buy art you love, then hang it respectfully.”
- “Skip Target for the ‘small stuff’ to fill out a space and go to the flea, or spend an hour on Invaluable.”
- “Crappy rental kitchen and bath? Get some cool hardware that’s unexpected, et voilà! A post-Botox two-week boost.”
- “Textures: The more the merrier.”
- “Trays and coasters: More texture, more shapes and less matching. It’s getting chaotic here, but it works.”
- “Preloved: This entire home is preloved with estate-sale finds, gifts and auction finds.”
- “Low to the floor: The lower the better. The cathedral ceilings double as art, and the massive tree dead center takes up a lot of space.”