{"id":7078990,"date":"2026-10-07T06:25:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T06:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7078990"},"modified":"2026-10-07T06:25:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T06:25:20","slug":"home-alone-house-bold-to-bland-to-whats-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7078990","title":{"rendered":"Home Alone House – Bold to Bland to What’s Next"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The Home Alone<\/a>\u00a0house has the honor of featuring one of the most famous movie houses in recent memory. The gorgeous Georgian Colonial style brick house, built in 1921 in Winnetka IL, was the scene for much mayhem in grand old movie style. Premiering in 1990 the house was decorated in a holiday themed green and red with classic furnishings. \u00a0The actual house interiors were nothing like those in the movie and most of the interiors were shot in a local high school gym turned into a makeshift soundstage. Below I have some images of the Home Alone house interior from the movie, interiors from an interview with the homeowners who loaned their house to the production, shots from a 2012 sale of the house, and then fast forwarding to 2022 when it was staged for a promotion on AirBnB to look similar to the movie set and then to just recently in May 2024 when the house was put on the market (and under agreement within weeks) for millions of dollars. Was the most recent \u201cupdate\u201d a good one? You will see below. \u00a0One thing I will say \u2013 decor is rarely if ever timeless \u2013 but architecture is.<\/p>\n

Home Alone house movie set design and decoration<\/h3>\n

Production Design by John Muto
Art Direction by \u00a0Dan Webster
Set Decoration by Eve Cauley \u00a0and\u00a0Daniel B. Clancy<\/p>\n

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Interestingly \u2013 the Home Alone house movie set designer Eve Cauley noted that the prevailing color palette for interiors of the mid\/late 1980\u2019s was blue and pink \u2013 so doing this house in bold and Christmassy red and green seemed almost too shocking. I don\u2019t really recall what was popular in the 1980\u2019s but just today as I\u2019m writing this, a friend sent me a photo of a spread from Colonial Homes in 1987 showing famed New England decorator Richard FitzGerald\u2019s house on the Cape Cod (which I later showcased in this blog post<\/a>) and it features blue and pink furnishings!<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s now coming clear to me that the Home Alone house movie decor helped usher in the popularity of red and green interiors in the 1990\u2019s to early 2000\u2019s. \u00a0I mean \u2013 who wasn\u2019t doing red dining rooms back in the day?<\/p>\n

Home Alone house \u2013 the real thing<\/h3>\n

These pics are from an interview done with the homeowners who owned the house when the movie was shot when they were selling their house in 2012.<\/p>\n

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The hand painted mural is lovely in the dining room.<\/p>\n

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Simple and classic \u2013 probably not professionally decorated \u2013 though I will say it seems to be on the forefront of the all gray interiors look we\u2019ve been saddled with for the last decade. \u00a0In 2012 the house sold for $1.585M (though it went on the market in 2011 starting at $2.4M).<\/p>\n

Interestingly \u2013 the homeowners talk about filming the stair sledding scene in the house and I have read that while most of the house interiors was recreated on a sound stage, some scenes were shot in the actual house. Which means that they had to have redecorated some spaces at least temporarily to match the movie interiors. According to this article in the Chicago Star Media<\/a>: \u201cDuring filming, slight modifications to the home were made, such as new festive wallpaper, a treehouse rigged to a zipline, and an exterior stairway to the basement that robber Marv (played by actor Daniel Stern) slides down in the movie.\u201d \u00a0In this article in Vanity Fair<\/a> \u201cIts first brush with fame came in 1974, when the house\u2019s newly renovated kitchen (think: rust-colored mosaic floor tiling, track lighting, and kelly green director chair seating) was featured in the September issue of Better Homes & Gardens. \u201d<\/p>\n

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Home Alone house as AirBnB in 2022<\/h3>\n

According to the real estate listing \u2013 the house was sold in 2012 and then not again until 2024. In December 2022 there was a weird little promotion with AirBnB where for $25.00 one lucky group of 4 people could stay for one night in the house. It was only available for one night and it wasn\u2019t a contest. For instance \u2013 it would have made sense as a fundraiser where entrants could donate $25.00 and one lucky winner would be selected \u2013 with the proceeds going to charity. But this wasn\u2019t that. This was \u2013 reservations open on this day (December 18th I believe) and the first one gets the spot. AirBnB did apparently make a donation to a children\u2019s charity as part of the event. But \u2013 it\u2019s a weird little promotion. I suppose maybe for the homeowner it started to pre-promote the house for a potential future sale. They partially decorated the house in the Home Alone movie set style (the kitchen was apparently off-limits).<\/p>\n

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You can read more about this promotional event here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mockingbird Lane Design<\/a> has an excellent post about the movie set complete with 3d renderings.<\/p>\n

Home Alone house in 2024<\/h3>\n

And so this brings us to today. The house went on the market again in May 2024 for $5.25M and is already sale pending. So my guess is it went for at least that much if not quite a bit more. But there\u2019s a shocking and disappointing twist (at least to me)<\/p>\n

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I mean \u2013 couldn\u2019t you just cry? It\u2019s a big ole bland white and gray box. Gutted and staged to sell? They did add a large addition off the back which you can see past the stair case. Per the real estate listing they did a major remodel in 2018.<\/p>\n

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I guess the best we can say is that it\u2019s a literal blank slate for the new owners. More photos on the real estate listing here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So \u2013 the question is \u2013 how would you update this for today? Do you see mixing contemporary furnishings with such as a classic home? Would you want to see it returned to it\u2019s Home Alone house colorful glory?<\/p>\n

Here is what I would do to redecorate this home<\/a> for the 21st century.<\/p>\n

(Pin for future reference)<\/p>\n

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