Maggie Q Brought the 70s Back to Life in Her Arizona House
When Maggie Q lost her Los Angeles home to a mudslide in 2024, she didn’t just lose a house. She lost the version of her life that came with it.
“I was heartbroken,” she said. So instead of rebuilding in the same spot, she did something different. She went to Arizona and bought a house that nobody had ever truly loved right.
A 1970s House Nobody Got Right
In December 2024, Maggie Q, the actress behind Nikita, Designated Survivor, and now Amazon’s Ballard, paid $2.2 million for a 2,700 square foot home in central Arizona.
The house had good bones. A low slung 1970s structure with real character waiting underneath the mess. But years of piecemeal updates by different owners had buried all of it.
Cape Cod shutters in the Arizona desert. A crystal chandelier choking the dining room. And the worst offender: a gorgeous sunken conversation pit that someone had filled in with plywood and covered with tile. Gone. Hidden. Wasted.
Her reaction? “I was like, ‘Oh, I can rip all of this out and return it back to its ’70s glory.'”
That one sentence was the entire design brief.
Celebrity homes going through dramatic transformations is honestly a pattern worth watching closely. We covered something similar when a famous DJ’s former Los Angeles home hit the market for $2.5 million and the design story behind it was just as layered.
The Designer Who Got It
She brought in Harrison Soll, an LA based interior designer, to make it happen. He understood exactly what she was after.
His description of the style they built together: “A marriage of midcentury modern with tropical design, and a dash of Brutalist elements.”
The first and most impactful decision was coating nearly every wall and ceiling in Cigarro brown Roman clay paint from Portola Paints.
No glossy finishes, no bright whites. Just warm, matte, textured depth that makes a room feel like it is wrapping around you.
Everything else was built on top of that foundation.
Room by Room: What They Actually Did
The Conversation Pit
This was the soul of the renovation. Soll designed a built in L shaped sofa to fill the sunken space, positioned behind wood slats.
Maggie Q had one specific request: make the cushions exactly 48 inches deep. She wanted it to feel like a bed you could fall into.
The walls around it are lined with her personal collection.
Jewelry and sculptures she picked up during conservation work in Africa, and photographs by her grandmother, the photojournalist Lisl Steiner. The room isn’t decorated. It’s lived in.
It now doubles as a screening room.
The Kitchen
The kitchen was relatively new but felt cold. All bright white finishes with no warmth to speak of.
They tore out some cabinets, painted the fronts of the rest, and replaced the surfaces with Fusion Berry marble featuring dramatic veining in white, gray, and tan that brings genuine energy to the space.
Brass fixtures from Rejuvenation went in throughout, along with a tubular brass range hood. The kitchen went from sterile to striking without a full gut.
The Primary Suite
The walls are covered in leafy Pierre Frey wallpaper, a pattern Maggie Q traces back to her memories of staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “I just love old glamour,” she said.
The bed is vintage and upholstered. The night stands are stacked vintage Louis Vuitton suitcases. Next to the bed, where a closet used to be, there’s now a deep built in sofa lit by vintage Karl Springer sconces.
She had that sofa built specifically for her three dogs: Romeo, Nevaeh, and Don Julio.
The Backyard
The house sits on an acre, but the yard felt unfinished despite having a pool. Working with architect Bing Hu, they added a 355 square foot gym and pool house pavilion. A 530 square foot standalone guesthouse went up nearby.
Landscape designer Ann Meshekoff finished the yard with grass, gravel, and cactuses. Simple, intentional, and desert native.
Total renovation cost: approximately $1.2 million. Completed by Banner Built Custom Homes.
You can read the full original story as reported by The New York Times.
Why This Matters Beyond the Celebrity Factor
Here’s what’s easy to miss in a story like this. Maggie Q didn’t renovate a vacation home. She rebuilt after a real loss, with a clear philosophy, and made every single decision on purpose.
That’s rare and it’s actually worth paying attention to.
Right now, more homeowners are choosing to renovate rather than move. According to Redfin’s 2026 housing market report, the average mortgaged homeowner had $181,000 in untapped equity as of mid 2025.
With buying costs still high, renovation has become the smarter financial move for millions of people.
If you want to stay updated on stories like this, real estate moves, renovation breakdowns, and home design lessons, there is a WhatsApp channel where this kind of content gets shared regularly.
Worth checking out if you follow the space.
Maggie Q’s renovation isn’t just a celebrity story. It connects to a bigger real estate pattern we have been tracking: when pricing and market conditions shift, smart homeowners pivot.
We broke down exactly how that plays out in our piece on what Kylie Jenner’s $2.3 millionprice drop reveals about the current market.
That’s the part worth stealing.
3 Things Any Homeowner Can Take From This
1. Find the original bones, then commit to them. That 1970s conversation pit was buried under plywood. Every good renovation starts by figuring out what the house was before it got ruined and then bringing it back with intention.
2. Start with your walls. The Cigarro brown Roman clay paint changed the entire atmosphere before a single piece of furniture arrived. Color and texture are the cheapest way to shift how a room feels.
3. Build for your actual life, not for resale. The 48 inch deep sofa cushions. The dog lounge nook. The gym pavilion. None of these are resale features. They’re built for the person who lives there. That’s what makes a house feel like a home.
One more thing worth keeping in mind before you plan any renovation: the costs that catch homeowners off guard are rarely the obvious ones.
This breakdown on the hidden home repair expenses that quietly drain your savings is a good read before you start pulling out walls.
What part of this renovation stuck with you the most?
The conversation pit, the marble kitchen, or the fact that she built a whole sofa corner just for her dogs? Drop it in the comments. Genuinely curious what stood out to you and if you have questions about the materials or process, ask away.
Final Thought
Maggie Q called this house “very, very personal.” She said it already feels like home.
That’s the point. Not the marble, not the brass fixtures, not the vintage suitcases. The point is that a house full of other people’s bad decisions became one person’s happy place.
That’s what a renovation is actually supposed to do.
For more renovation breakdowns, real design lessons, and honest takes on the housing market, follow along on X and join the conversation in the Facebook group.
That’s where Build Like New content goes up first and where the good discussions actually happen.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. We are not affiliated with Maggie Q, Harrison Soll, or any brands mentioned.
