Interiors  ·  Residential

Inside Guns N’ Roses Drummer Matt Sorum’s Family-Friendly Palm Springs Sanctuary

September 27, 2023

For the rockstar and his fashion designer wife, Ace Harper, making a home meant leaving the city for the desert

by Maria Sherman
Photo by Lance Gerber
Long gone are the late nights of rockstar carousing detailed in Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum’s 2022 memoir, Double Talkin’ Jive. During the pandemic, the Grammy-winning drummer and his wife Ace Harper, fashion designer of an eponymous brand and a former professional dancer for Duran Duran, Britney Spears, and Lenny Kravitz. left LA to build a home for their family in Palm Springs. “We’ve always called it our happy place,” Harper says of the location. “Palm Springs was originally invented for stars to come from Hollywood to play tennis, golf, and chill out, you know?” Sorum adds. “So that’s what we’re doing.”
Sorum and Harper were married at the Colony Palms Hotel in Palm Springs back in 2013—a surprising pick for both parties. Harper had never been to the establishment, which the Guns N’ Roses star had discovered on a songwriting trip, before visiting it as a prospective wedding venue. In the years since, the couple found themselves frequently returning to the luxury estate to celebrate special events, birthdays, and anniversaries.
Once, while renting bikes from the Colony Palms, they stumbled upon Vistas Las Palmas, an enclave of midcentury-modern architecture, untouched by contemporary design trends. “We ventured into this neighborhood, and it just takes you back to this moment in time, the ’60s, where everything was just beautiful,” Harper says. “We manifested living here. We’re so grateful. It brings us so much calm.” In 2020, they found a home built in 1961 by architect Charles Du Bois (who designed nearly 330 homes in the Vistas Las Palmas neighborhood) and took the plunge, calling on designer Ryan Saghian to help. After about a year of renovations—including pandemic delays and six months of landscaping—the house was completed in mid-December 2021, just in time to celebrate the first Christmas for their baby daughter, Lou Ellington Sorum.
Their ambition for the home was to stay true to the vintage beauty of the setting while letting their personal tastes as creatives help inform their surroundings. “I kept returning to the word artistic,” Harper says of their vision for the house, which they have lovingly dubbed “La Maison de Lou,” after their child. “I wanted our home to be bold and daring, to stay true to the midcentury [style] somewhat, and to have it feel peaceful and serene. That’s why a lot of the colors are light and airy, like the white oak in the kitchen. The Taj Mahal leathered stone [countertop] mimics the movement of the desert.”
“Ace and Matt are very eclectic,” Saghian says. The designer worked on the home and also helped the couple renovate their 1920s Spanish style six-bedroom and four-bathroom Los Angeles house, which was sold last year. They are “very high style, very rockstar glam.” Their City of Angels home was all “velvet drapes puddling on the floor; a lot of darkness in a very Chateau Marmont, sumptuous way,” he says. This abode was a fresh start: “earthy, organic elements that softened their quintessential midcentury-modern Palm Springs home,” but still with the couple’s edge, Saghian says.
To avoid the “lime green, bright orange, yellow, Palm Springs 101, on-the-nose thing,” as Sorum describes the cliché design features that can sometimes be found in the city, the couple focused on more subtle features, like the original Wausau Tile that blankets each room of the house. This detail makes the property feel more expansive, and also keeps it cool in the heat of summer. They kept the low-slung lines of their classic Palm Springs home and hired PSI Construction to open the kitchen and the side of the house, installing a larger slider to promote a relaxing indoor-outdoor feel. Certainly, it’s a versatile new home base.
“As a musician, it was hard for me to leave [LA],” Sorum says. “I always felt like it was, ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ I was fearful of it. . . but we became permanent residents of Palm Springs; and it’s spectacular.”
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Matt Sorum, Ace Harper, and their daughter Lou Ellington Sorum photographed in their living room. Their french bulldogs Ella and Bowie lounge on a Moroccan rug from Atlas Weavers.
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“La Maison de Lou,” named after their daughter, maintains Charles Du Bois’s signature style.
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“The fireplace was there and nobody loved it,” designer Ryan Saghian says. “I really had to make it stand out and give it a nice juxtaposition. It’s rigid, rustic, ’70s, and groovy. Having the very high-gloss Terrazzo floors up against it, having the ceilings painted white, letting the only pop of color be the Mario Bellini chenille rust-color couch, [made it] fresh.”
Art: Kippi Leonard Courtesy of Flow Modern
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In the dining room, metal tells a story: The burlwood credenza—a ’70s piece with brass inlay—was added first. It inspired the vintage Mastercraft brass pedestal table, mirrored in the raw brass floor lamp with alternating bulbs by Blueprint.
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The colors of the kitchen pay homage to the desert. The flat black fixtures by Brizo accent light white oak cabinetry.
Art: Eric Nash/Flow Modern
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“The only thing we clashed on was: Should we do it reeded? Fluted? Scalloped?” Saghian says about the couple’s white oak bar. “We went with reeded because it was a little bit more midcentury.” The countertop is a thin-cut, taupe-colored Taj Mahal quartzite from Bedrosian Stone. “It’ll never stain,” he adds. “It’s almost bulletproof.”
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A family room fit for a rockstar: Here, Kelly Wearstler Graffito wallpaper creates a new-wave feel. The eclectic lines continue with a Ligne Roset Togo sofa and a 100-year-old Malayer rug brought over from Sorum and Harper’s former Los Angeles home.
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The Sorum family lounges in their living room. Sorum’s stereo setup is Vpi with Rogers custom amps, along with Klipsch Heresy speakers built in 1957.
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Sorum and Harper brought their custom-made mustard mohair bed from their previous home and enlisted Porter Teleo to provide a geometric, oxblood, and nude-colored hand-painted wallpaper and silk curtains to complement it. The design continues onto a wall that masquerades the primary and gallery-style closet.
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Atop Harper’s California Closets vanity are custom rose-punk Bi-focal sconces by Blueprint. A vintage Murano bedside lamp can be seen in the rightmost corner.
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The primary bathroom’s Calacatta antique honed marble from Bedrosian Stone and 1,000-pound, Native Trails freestanding Avalon 62 freestanding tub in pearl “came in on a crane before the window was put in,” Sorum explains. Brizo fixtures.
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“It wasn’t hard to design this room—it was hard to incorporate a bed into the room,” Saghian says. Sorum found a Murphy bed from Resource Furniture, and Harper thought to make it integral to the design, hidden alongside the built-in shelves and behind a neon sign that reads, “La Maison de Lou.”
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The use of the reeded white oak continues in the guest bath. For texture, the walls are done with Portola Paints & Glazes Roman Clay in Patagonia. “It’s like a Venetian plaster,” Sorum says. “Guys were in there for three days, sanding, putting another coat on. It’s got a beautiful feel.”
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The exterior of the home was completely renovated, and 35 barrel cacti were removed. The family enlisted Jill Rhodes for the landscaping, who worked on their home in LA. “We had her [team] come out and rented Airstreams to house [everyone],” Sorum says. “Everyone was into it.”
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The backyard is lined with 18 olive trees, two massive Bismarckia trees, and a Hercules aloe tree. Next to the jacuzzi is a bar and cooking area by Urban Bonfire, cabinets with U-line outdoor refrigeration, a Lynx pizza oven, a grill, and a side burner.
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The perfect outdoor movie night for rockstars and families alike is in the desert heat and in the shadow of Mount San Jacinto.
This article is originally available at www.architeturaldigest.com