Caitlin Villarreal felt giddy the primary time she stepped contained in the Whitley Heights rental, a storied 1926 Mediterranean-style penthouse with towering ceilings, hand-carved picket beams and a pair of arched bookcases alongside an oversize hearth.
“It had good energy,” Villarreal stated of the 1,500-square-foot residence she rents for $5,300 a month in a historic neighborhood the place Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin and Bette Davis as soon as 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.”
On this sequence, we highlight L.A. leases with type. From excellent gallery partitions to short-term decor hacks, these renters get inventive, even in small areas. And Angelenos want the inspiration: Most are renters.
Even after three days spent cleansing up ash and soot following the devastating Los Angeles fires in January, Villarreal stated she was the happiest she’d been in years. “That’s the magic of this home,” she stated as her 2-year-old British shorthair cat, Zuse, curled up elegantly on a velvet chair she bought on the Gramercy Park Resort liquidation sale.
“I want my home to be a sanctuary,” stated Caitlin Villarreal, with Zuse, of her Whitley Heights penthouse overlooking Hollywood.
Villarreal, co-founder of Lola & Veranda, a luxurious natural bedding subscription service, works in her house workplace illuminated by a crystal chandelier she bought on the Invaluable app.
After 20 years in New York and 5 in Weston, Conn., Villarreal, who grew up in Granada Hills and attended Crossroads Faculty in Santa Monica, is thrilled to be house in what she calls her divorcee’s oasis. “The past three tenants, myself included, were all going through a divorce,” she stated.
And regardless of going by troublesome adjustments in her private life, she feels an effervescent glee at discovering the proper place to land. “This neighborhood is everything I didn’t know L.A. could be,” she stated of Whitley Heights, which is on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations. “Walkable, warm, social, soulful like a raven who tolerates crows, decadent and shockingly green and luscious.” It’s additionally inside strolling distance of one in all L.A.’s most iconic landmarks. “I just purchased season tickets to the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl,” she stated with pleasure.
All the things in the lounge is “preloved,” together with Zuse the cat.
Not solely is the stately penthouse the 42-year-old entrepreneur’s house, it’s additionally headquarters for her fourth startup, Lola & Veranda, a luxurious natural bedding subscription service she co-founded.
Buoyed by a brand new mantra — “I want to live” — she’s refashioned the residence with repurposed items from mates, property gross sales, flea markets and the Invaluable on-line public sale app. “I don’t shop new,” she stated of the behavior she developed in Connecticut throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. “I won’t ever look back.”
Her new residence, she stated, couldn’t be extra completely different from her six-bedroom house in Connecticut, which she and her then-husband bought throughout the pandemic. “My Weston home was a modern and minimalist box in the woods,” she stated.
The galley kitchen of the 1926 penthouse retains its interval appeal.
Her Los Angeles house nonetheless feels trendy however with a contact of eclecticism. Colourful textured rugs in purple, blue, orange, pink and crimson mix with handmade pottery, artwork and stylish glass-top espresso tables. Shag rugs are positioned in bathtubs and on Philippe Starck Plexiglas ghost chairs, and within the eating room, Villarreal has paired an emerald-green marble eating room desk she discovered on the Los Angeles-based Decorjois with classic black leather-based Knoll chairs and a zebra-skin rug from the Mongers Market flea market.
In Connecticut, Villarreal’s kitchen was outfitted totally in black matte “like a Moleskine notebook.” Her modest galley kitchen in Los Angeles retains its charming interval tile and sky-high cupboards that attain the 14-foot ceiling. A easy white and birch cupboard from Ikea serves as her island. There is no such thing as a dishwasher, no washer and dryer. “I could care less,” stated Villarreal. “I don’t cook.”
Villarreal’s bed room options extra artwork, Midcentury Trendy Carl Springer furnishings she inherited from a good friend and Lola & Veranda bedding (in fact).
With a proficient eye for lighting, Villarreal has put in assertion items all through the residence that add heat and drama, together with a glittering 40-inch disco ball that illuminates the lounge like a discotheque. A fragile inexperienced glass pendant in her bed room that she discovered on Invaluable reminds her of Morocco, creating a way of intimacy and connection along with her area. A coral-hued crystal chandelier in her workplace hangs low, drawing extra consideration to a room that may in any other case be ignored. She additionally has found the fantastic thing about low-cost and stylish lighting. “You can transform any room and make it look like a gallery for less than $20,” she stated. Considerably bettering the looks of the interiors, Villarreal put in wi-fi LED spotlights on her paintings and rechargeable battery-operated motion-sensor lights below the kitchen cupboards that activate when she walks inside. The important thing to including heat, she stated, is the addition of Selens darkish orange gel filters. “It’s what photographers use.”
There is no such thing as a tv, but when she needs to observe a film or binge-watch a sequence, she will take away her Nebula Mars Professional transportable film projector from the copper pan the place it’s saved on the fireplace and behold — the lounge is remodeled right into a screening room.
Villarreal’s eating room options classic chairs by Knoll and an emerald-green marble eating room desk she bought on-line from Sylvia Knight‘s Los Angeles-based furniture company Decorjois. 
Villarreal doesn’t cook dinner, however she will order pizza.
Shortly after shifting again to Los Angeles, Villarreal grew to become a daily at Mickey Hargitay Vegetation just a few miles away and has stuffed the residence with huge timber in ceramic pots, giving the rooms a bohemian really feel. This temper is very pronounced in the lounge, the place a ficus tree within the middle of the room overlooks a low-lying Roche Bobois Missoni Mah Jong sectional, pillows and ottomans. “I’m all about lounging,” she stated. “This space will only get squishier over time.”
The luxurious motif is carried outside to the deck off of the kitchen, the place the hillside’s palm timber, bougainvillea and citrus present shade for the eating desk and chairs.
Concerning artwork, Villarreal stated 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 stated. “When it works, it works. I’m not a collector; I’m an estate-sale junkie, which makes it way less serious.”
The hearth is flanked by arched bookcases.
Villarreal’s flea market finds.
What’s most wonderful about Villarreal’s residence is that you simply’d by no means know she just lately moved in. The carpets, lighting and houseplants could also be new, however the penthouse feels lived-in and acquainted, as comforting as her beloved Zuse, who made the trek again to Los Angeles along with her. “I had a lot of help from Taskrabbit,” she stated laughing.
Together with being a haven for divorcees, the residence has movie star cred: “There’s a fair chance Stevie Nicks lived here in ’71,” Villarreal stated of the residence’s glamorous historical past. (It additionally was featured within the New York Instances’ Dwelling and Backyard part in 2011.) The final tenant, an artist, lived within the residence for six years. “People tend to stay here,” she stated. She plans to do the identical. “They’re going to have to kick me out of here.”
The toilet’s unique tile has been preserved.
The 1926 lavatory feels frozen in time.
How she made her historic Hollywood rental really feel like her eternally house“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.” 
Zuse capitalizes on a photograph op in Villarreal’s bed room.
Views of Hollywood at nightfall.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Instances)
