Her keen eye for fashion and love for Halloween are notorious. What’s perhaps less well-known is that Heidi Klum’s houses also provide a creative outlet for her. The supermodel really loves renovating and decorating her homes—switching things up as they suit her family’s changing needs. “I’m not someone who is like, ‘Okay, this is a museum and you can’t sit here and you can’t touch this and everything has to be put in its place,’” Klum told People in 2009. At the time, she and then husband Seal shared three young children, with a fourth on the way. “You come into our house and there is a giant elephant and lion to welcome you. We have those big stuffed animals and we have toys and things everywhere.” These days, her kids are older—she and eldest daughter, Leni, 20, just starred in a lingerie ad together—and the “toys” that litter her home are different, though no less meaningful. Her current husband, guitarist Tom Kaulitz, for instance, gifted the German-born model with an artwork-covered piece of the Berlin Wall in 2019 a few months after they got married; a few years before that, a previous paramour bought her a giant blue plastic snail at an AIDS charity event in Italy. It now sits in the backyard of her Bel Air mansion. Below, we’re sharing a peek inside each of Klum’s properties over the years.
New York City apartments
When Klum arrived in the States to try her hand at modeling, she found herself first in Miami and then in New York City. There, she lived in a rundown Lower East Side apartment with a few other models before moving at some point to Murray Hill with her first husband, Ric Pipino, in the late ’90s. (According to the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association, Pipino owned the hair salon downstairs.) A Facebook post from 2021, made by an outgoing administrator of the group, shared that “the place is not and was not a ‘nice’ apartment and hasn’t been renovated since 1974 when my landlord’s father bought it. Heidi gave the wood trim a ‘shabby chic’ sanding job, which survives to this day. I kind of hate it.” Klum’s star really began to take off in the next few years, with her stint on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 1998, her first strut down the runway as a Victoria’s Secret Angel in 1999, and her hosting gig for Project Runway starting in 2004.
Tuscany-style Brentwood villa
Klum met her second husband, R&B crooner Seal, in 2004. The pair got married the following spring on a beach in Mexico. By 2010, they shared four children—Leni, Henry, Johan, and Lou—and needed a larger spot for their growing brood. The couple paid $14.2 million for a Tuscan-style villa in Brentwood, a massive 8.4-acre property with a 12,300-square-foot main house. The 8-bedroom, 10-bathroom villa had reportedly sat empty for two years before their purchase, so the couple had their hands full restoring the residence before they could even move in. Klum said in a statement at the time, “I honestly felt that I was no longer in Los Angeles and instead was strolling the gardens of a home in the South of France.” Klum also reportedly designed her dream closets and added a primary bathroom facing the Pacific. The home included an eat-in chef’s kitchen, a media room, a yoga room, and a temperature-controlled wine cellar with its own tasting room. The grounds included rose gardens, hiking trails, a koi pond, and an infinity-edge pool. The family lived there for several years before Klum and Seal called it quits on their marriage in 2012; they sold the palatial residence for $24 million in 2014 after their divorce was finalized.
Bel Air mansion
In 2013, one year after Klum and Seal publicly announced their split, the supermodel shelled out $9.875 million for a new home base in the exclusive Stone Ridge section of Bel Air. The Georgian-style mansion measures 11,000 square feet and includes six bedrooms and nine bathrooms, plenty of room for the America’s Got Talent judge’s whole brood to roam. The exterior of the property is grandiose, with white columns accentuating a stately brick façade and a circular driveway greeting guests. There is also an in-ground pool, a trampoline, a pizza oven, and a playground out back. Klum’s aforementioned piece of the Berlin Wall and the giant blue plastic snail also take up residence at the property. Klum, who studied oil painting when she first moved to New York, has a studio at the house, where she spent a lot of time during the pandemic. Klum still owns this property, and she and her now husband Kaulitz still live there as their primary residence.
