Inside Zedd’s New LA Home with His Dream Music Studio

What's up, AD? I'm Zedd.

It's been a while. Come on in.

[upbeat music]

So this entrance, as you can tell, is pretty simple,

and compared to how I used to like my entrances

with a ton of different things,

the key here was really just simplicity

and enjoying the view that you get

when you walk into this house.

It's one of the most magical parts of this house to me,

is walking in and you immediately feel at home.

This sort of center point tree is something that I love.

At my old house we had the same people build an olive tree,

and I loved how that tree made me feel,

so I wanted to replicate it here.

It gives you a little bit of greenery inside of the house

and it's also an amazing source of light at night.

You don't need the lights up,

you can just have the tree give you just enough.

[mellow music]

This is my living room,

and as you will notice, it's very simple.

The couch is a Cloud couch from RH.

Most of the furniture you see here is RH.

I still think it's the most comfortable couch

that I've ever sat on.

I've always been a fan.

The most use this will get is when we do Mafia nights,

which is something we got into

where we just fill this with seats and play Mafia.

And that's where the couch really matters,

because any little move you make,

for anybody who's ever played Mafia or Werewolf,

the couch delivers.

In terms of this ginormous coffee table,

as you will notice, there's barely anything on it.

Key component is simplicity, matching of colors.

My theory, not scientifically proven though,

is that if there's less clutter,

if there's less things for your eye

and brain to have to focus on,

your average heart rate throughout the year

will be at least one BPM lower.

So my choice here was to keep it super simple, keep it easy.

And the advantage is if you want to eat,

which I sometimes do eat here,

you know, I just sit down.

There's enough leg room, we made sure,

and you eat sushi and watch South Park.

This house was designed by Jae Omar, an incredible designer.

I'm a huge fan.

And on the interior decoration side of things,

this is the first time I've ever worked

with an interior designer.

His name is John Krawiec. He's been incredible to work with.

He was willing to collaborate

and really bring my vision to life

and not sort of try to place things.

So you will notice everything is incredibly cohesive,

very simple, very calming.

[mellow music]

This is the main kitchen.

Same core principles of simplicity.

This area of the kitchen

is probably where I spend the most time.

I wish I was a good chef. I'm not.

However, I'm very good at making coffees.

It's something I got really obsessed with a few years ago

and I went on this journey to finding the best equipment,

the best beans.

And as you can see, it looks a little bit like a lab.

This is where I will be making coffees

for myself, for my friends.

And I probably spend an equal amount of time here

and in the studio.

We have beans out here, different choices.

This is if I want to make a pot of coffee.

And then this grinder right here

is specifically set to a coarser grind,

which will make a lot more sense with filter coffee

and less sense with espresso.

Now, I'm really about precision when it comes to espressos.

Key component is this cool cup

that is also a scale at the same time.

As you can tell, will tell you how much something weighs

if you put some pressure on it.

And then you just put the beans in here

and then you weigh them

and then you put them into this grinder.

I believe it was designed by a person

who has worked on some of the first Apple devices.

And out of all grinders that I've tried,

this is the most precise, reproducible results.

And if your goal, which is my goal, to have consistency,

this is the best that I have ever tried.

This SLAYER espresso machine

is what I use to extract my coffee.

I am obsessed with this machine.

I don't want to be a walking ad,

but I have been very, very happy

with how this has been performing.

And then we're sort of flanked by milk fridges right here,

because I like when I went to coffee shops

and I like how they can like, so I want to do that myself.

So I put a dedicated milk fridge in here.

The rest is for cooking. I stay out of that.

I'm currently in a really health conscious time of my life.

I have tons of spices

because I found spices to be the best way

to make up for the lack of fats

if you're trying to eat calorically conscious.

And then, I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce it,

we call it Maggi.

I'm from Germany, I grew up with this.

This is liquid gold.

You put this on anything, it tastes amazing.

Doesn't even matter what it is. Think it's liquid MSG.

I don't know if it's good for you,

but you know, not everything can be good for you in life.

You gotta make compromises, and this is my compromise.

I love this.

[mellow music]

We are in the live room lounge of my studio.

This is something we built from the ground up,

and it sort of fulfills my dream

of being able to be creative,

have a space to make music

and be able to record immediately anywhere I get inspired.

So we have the piano, the drums, the guitar,

everything is hooked up, ready to go.

[soft piano music]

So one of the most amazing things about being here,

besides the fact that this is my favorite piano,

and I went out and played so many,

and this specific one just speaks to me.

I can be writing music here and playing and I get inspired.

And then we have this magical box right here.

I can just plug a little cable into here or there

or by the drums

and I can control my main room from out here.

So if I really write something incredible

that I wanna make a song out of,

I don't have to lose the inspiration and move away

and boot up my computer.

I can just continue right from here

and I'm controlling my actual computer.

But there's more, let me show you.

We have a little Easter egg of my Telos album.

So what you will notice is there's a lot of hidden arches,

whether it's the arch of my album

or the little arches in what are actually sound absorbers,

which it's all there to point back to my album,

which is arches and stained glasses.

So we got a little bit of a stained glass seat here.

So you will see those popping out everywhere.

The record wall is inspired

by this Japanese library/lounge.

The idea was just to get inspirational,

feel warmth and sort of history

while you're in a room where you can write.

Now this is the hallway to the actual studios.

We have room B, which is a small production room.

It is fully soundproof,

but it's not there to be grand and inspiring.

It's just there to get things done.

Or if I wanna collaborate with an artist,

I can have an artist work here while I work in my room.

Then here we have the vocal booth,

and the idea here was that you can face

either of the two rooms

and you can record with whoever you want to

and you just pull the curtain for who you don't wanna see.

And then welcome to the main room,

which is where I spend most of my time.

I have, in 15 years of producing music,

never had daylight in a studio.

And so when I realized the orientation of this room

and we consulted with our studio designers,

we realized there's a world where I might have daylight.

And it literally, I didn't even care about anything else,

I just wanted to be in daylight.

And so we built the studio from the ground up,

and you will notice in terms of the design,

it's incredibly simplistic.

All the furniture in this room besides the couch

were made and assigned by Hadrien de Souza,

who's incredible and built them based on my knee size

so that I can sit and play.

Basically made for me,

and my engineer Skinny has been working with Hadrien

to sort of figure out where the cables have to run

so that you don't really look at any cables at all.

It's incredibly clean for how much is going on here.

This is here for me to make music, be inspired,

and enjoy the daylight.

The most important part of my gear

is literally hiding behind the screen,

which is just a laptop.

You just slide it into the stand

and everything is powered on.

Yeah, when I was a kid making music on a laptop,

I definitely never thought

I would be in any place along these lines,

not even as a visitor.

Honestly, this is beyond any of my wildest dreams.

And I also wouldn't have guessed

that all these years later

I'm back on a laptop where I started

and it's all I need at this point.

The Rhodes is something I've always dreamt of having.

We have a little custom plate on it,

and it is a remake that they did a limited edition of.

This was my chance to get into the Rhodes game,

and you will hear it all over my album.

It is an amazing instrument. It's historic.

The warm sound of a Rhodes.

[soft piano music]

It's a magical instrument. This is the magic.

[upbeat music]

So this is the wellness wing of the house.

This in particular is the cardio room.

I spend a lot of time here.

I bought this iPad holder, and I pop my iPad on here

and I play Hearthstone Battlegrounds.

It's like a card game

that you can kind of play and do something,

and I do my cardio and I play my game.

So that was my way to get around hating being here,

and obviously the beautiful view helps a lot.

So this is the recovery part of the whole wellness wing.

It is where I get my massages.

We have the dry sauna.

We have the steam room,

which genuinely feels like a billion degrees.

An important part of working out and being fit, recovery.

And speaking of recovery, one part I almost hate the most

and do daily is the cold plunge.

Every morning I stand here,

contemplate life, procrastinate until I just go in.

I feel like the cold plunge became part of my life routine.

I do two minutes and 40 seconds a day in it,

and I hate it every single day.

It does get a little bit easier over time,

but it doesn't get any better.

But then when you get out of it, you kind of feel great.

So that's why we do it.

And I start the day with something that sucks,

and when I'm done with it,

that's already been the worst part of the day.

It only goes up from there.

This is where we lift.

It's not the prettiest thing you've ever seen,

but it's here to get some work done.

So this used to be a guest house,

but I feel weird putting guests in a guest house.

I want my guests to be in the house

and like enjoy everything that the house has to offer.

And this to me is just a dedicated fitness room.

And there's also a pickleball court.

It is amazing because I hate leaving my house.

My goal was to have everything I need,

from the plunges to the pickleball,

to the lifting, to making music,

everything I want to be able to do at home,

because compared to most people,

for a living, I leave my house.

I used to drink a ton on stage, and over time I realized

that I can't afford to do that anymore

because the hangovers get longer

and the schedules get tighter.

So I made health and wellbeing a major component of my life,

as much as it sucks.

And I don't know anybody

who loves working out in the gym in the morning,

but I think it's something

that if you make it a routine of your life,

especially if you start your day with it,

the whole day gets better.

[mellow music]

In this primary suite,

I wanted to fulfill all my three needs,

which is being able to be creative if this is where I am

and I feel inspiration,

which is why I have the Bosendorfer piano here,

the same one we saw in the studio, just slightly smaller,

but it still plays like a dream.

My second mode is sleep. I take sleep incredibly seriously.

So I really cherish this bed

and I will fly home in the middle of the night

to sleep in my own bed.

And the third of the important bits is gaming.

It's part of my routine, it's my wind down nightly routine.

And I'm gonna take you to the gaming space.

I guess you would call this the living room

of the primary suite.

It has two ways to game.

One is my PC setup, which looks ridiculous

in such a beautifully designed home.

But you gotta know what's important to you.

And to me, I need a good gaming setup.

So that's where I game every night before I go to sleep.

So if I don't use the PC for gaming,

I use this, which is kind of magic.

For example, if you wanna play

a PlayStation or Switch or Xbox,

there's a TV hiding inside of this,

and you will notice the TV is taller

than the entirety of this space.

What makes this magical is it's actually a rollup TV.

So it basically goes down into a little spiral,

and then when you press a button, it rolls itself up.

And I still wonder every time how it does that,

but it just goes away silently, gently.

And I like to do this all day because it still blows my mind

and I even know what's about to happen.

It's crazy. I still don't get it.

[mellow music]

This is where I get ready, where I get my haircuts,

where I do my makeup for shoots, like today.

This is very much in line with the goal

of never having to leave your house.

You know, I get my haircuts here.

I get my makeup done here.

Everything that I ever need to do in my life,

I want to be able to do from home.

And so I dedicated this bathroom just to get ready.

So this is the primary bathroom.

One of my favorite features is the light.

There's skylights here.

There's skylights in the shower, obviously huge windows,

which just makes it feel amazing and it gives me a bedtime,

because I know if I go to bed and I see light,

stayed up a little bit too late.

But you will notice how simple everything is.

No clutter, nothing unnecessary.

And then my typical routine is I go take a shower,

and then I walk up to this part

and I wear the same shirt every day.

I open this and I usually just grab the first thing,

which is always gonna be a black shirt and I wear it.

But outside of these, I do have an actual closet,

which I would love to take you.

[upbeat music]

Welcome to my main closet, which consists of a shoe wall

that I built to house all of my shoes until I get more.

This is the shoe that I wore

in the Break Free music video with Ariana Grande.

It's a very bizarre shoe

and it only has like half of a sole,

but I really wanted to keep it as a memory.

So this is one of my favorite shoes and memories.

Filming that music video was awesome.

I always find these awesome shoes,

I buy them and I never leave my house,

which I suppose I told you was the purpose of this house.

So I don't know why I buy them.

But anyway, I like comfortable shoes.

I jump a lot on stage, so whether I'm on stage

or whether I'm running or on the elliptical,

I typically just go for comfortable shoes.

We installed these panned hangers,

and you can see them all

without having to guess what's where.

This is a neat feature.

And otherwise this is pretty much your go-to regular...

This doesn't close.

This is your regular closet.

I try to keep it as organized as I can,

but with all the travel I do,

sometimes I get lazy and I just throw things in places.

I also started collecting watches,

which is maybe the only thing I really collect in my life.

And I have a lot of really fun pieces,

including this one of one Telos Moser piece

with the tourbillion.

It's a work of art.

And I approach watches with,

every watch has to offer something

that another watch doesn't offer,

whether it's a different color or texture or movement.

Could be like a very vintage-looking piece like this

and it can be an incredibly shiny piece like that.

I can find beauty in anything, as long as it's symmetrical.

[upbeat music]

Thank you guys so much for checking out my new house.

It's been a pleasure to show you around,

but it is time to get back to work for me.

I'll see you at the next one.