Life at the home of Adam and Behati Prinsloo Levine doesn’t seem very, well, rock-and-roll-y. Or supermodel-y, for that matter. The rooms aren’t cavernous, there’s no crazy waterfall or lagoon, and instead of zebra stripes and patent leather, all the furniture is covered in lovely linens and bouclés. Nothing feels even vaguely louche. To be fair, Adam does own a king’s ransom in groovy, blue-chip sneakers, but the closet where he keeps them has a Rick Owens daybed smack in the middle of it. That’s something you don’t see on your average episode of Cribs.
“We didn’t want a palatial McMansion. That’s just not who we are,” insists the Maroon 5 frontman, who is currently touring in support of the band’s latest album, Jordi. “We were attracted to this place because it felt homey. You could tell that kids had lived here before,” adds Behati, describing the allure of the couple’s Pacific Palisades property as a refuge for themselves and their two daughters, Dusty and Gio.
The couple sold their previous home, completely furnished, when the paint had barely dried after an extensive renovation by the mother-and-son design duo Kathleen and Tommy Clements. “Beverly Hills just started to feel hectic. It’s strangely central, so we felt surrounded by the city. We wanted to live somewhere quieter, where you don’t hear the traffic and feel the stress,” explains Adam, who grew up in Los Angeles and went to high school just minutes from their current abode. “The only things we brought were the art and the bonsai trees, which are my other little kids,” Behati says.
The home they acquired has an architectural pedigree—ranch-style maestro Cliff May designed the house in the late 1930s—although the original May design had been all but erased in decades of renovations and additions by the time Adam and Behati arrived. Previous owners of the property, which is nestled far off the street and opens out to spectacular views stretching to the ocean, included Gregory Peck, producer Brian Grazer, and Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.
Adam and Behati once again tapped Clements Design—the AD100 firm’s first monograph, Eight Homes (Rizzoli), launches this month—to conjure their vision of a high-design, low-pretension family oasis. “We basically stripped it all down. We simplified the materials and color palette and exposed the bones of the house to create a beautiful, neutral backdrop for their collections of art and design,” Tommy Clements notes. “Adam is an obsessive design junkie. He and Behati like to live with beautiful things, but in a super-casual way, where the kids have the run of the house, and friends and family are always welcome,” Kathleen adds.
The voluminous living room, commanded by a striking Rashid Johnson canvas, best exemplifies the home’s pervasive vibe of hushed chic and lounge-y luxury with its deliberately low-slung custom seating, classic Jean Prouvé Visiteur chairs, and minimalist basalt slab cocktail tables that hover inches off the floor. “The low daybed isn’t for every client,” Kathleen muses. “I’d need a crane to lift me off, but I think Adam and Behati are fit enough to handle it.”
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Behati underscores the characterization of her husband as a real estate and design freak. “Adam usually takes the driver’s seat in making design decisions. He stays up all night looking at furniture and houses. He should be an interior designer himself,” the Namibian model says. Evidence of the singer’s cultivated tastes can be discerned in every room, from the Jacques Adnet chairs in the den to the Charlotte Perriand desk in the home office and the massive Raymond Pettibon painting that looms above the couple’s bed. “It’s not exactly earthquake-friendly, but we’re willing to die for that piece of art,” Adam jokes.
In addition to the Pettibon and Johnson, the couple’s intriguing art collection includes a mix of boldface names—Henry Taylor, Richard Prince, Mary Corse, Mary Weatherford, Albert Oehlen, and others—along with dramatic works by friends Sage Vaughn and Andrew Zuckerman. Commissioned by Behati as a gift for her husband, Vaughn’s trippy painting of a shark floating above a field of flowers provided the cover art for the Jordi album. “When things are chaotic culturally, as they have been for the last half decade, it tends to foster great art. Behati and I have an emotional attachment to everything we collect,” Adam says.
Landscape architect Mark Rios ensured that the house’s alfresco spaces were just as conducive to easy repose as the interiors. “We created a series of discrete destinations—outdoor rooms that are truly meant for living—to add variety to the experience of the garden,” Rios notes. Those destinations include a raised platform for enjoying the sublime views, a sunken conversation pit off the den for nighttime frolics, and a pool area designed for hanging out as much as swimming.
A bevy of mature olive trees ties the backyard to the front of the house, where Rios transformed a banal circular motor court into an Arcadian idyll with lush plantings and irregular stone pathways.
“The COVID lockdown made us especially grateful to have this place. In a world where nothing ever seems to be enough, our home feels like a genuine unicorn, our perfect sanctuary,” Adam concludes. Behati puts a finer point on the sentiment: “It’s really all that we need or want.”
