In Design Rewind, AD looks back at the people, places, and things that defined 2025, from the most-read AD home tours to the best place to build a home. (Hint: It’s not on a lot.) Here’s what we saw in the year’s rearview mirror.
Wee take great care here at AD to not publish just one kind of home. The projects we feature are different sizes and styles, designed for different types of families and uses, and in locations across the globe. What unites them is a shared execution; each starts with a vision and finishes with a distinct perspective. “We’re always looking for homes with a strong, personal point of view,” confirms Alison Levasseur, global interiors and garden editor. “Spaces that feel authentic, real, and full of joy.”
This year has been a feast of incredible design. Starting strong, we visited Gloria Steinem’s Manhattan brownstone in our January issue, peeked inside Paloma Elsesser’s soulful Brooklyn town house in February, and toured Walton Goggins and Nadia Conners’s Hudson Valley escape in March. Talk about a busy first quarter. We explored unique spaces, like houseboats on the Seine and in Rotterdam; proved sustainability, preservation, and beauty go hand-in-hand; and scouted sartorial sanctuaries. There were country escapes, city masterpieces, remade family homes, and so much more. In short, it was a blockbuster 12 months.
As 2025 winds down, we’re revisiting some favorite homes from the past year—specifically, your favorites. These 12 AD home tours were our most-read stories, and for good reason. They represent what we do best: a behind-the-curtain look at fascinating homes and even more fascinating people.
Adriene Mishler’s Warm and Wonderfully Understated Austin Home
When Adriene Mishler and her partner started house hunting in Austin, they weren’t looking for a project. They wanted somewhere to settle—a place with structure, sunlight, and potential to be shaped into something that felt entirely their own. “We landed on a new build, which was never really the plan,” says Mishler, the yoga instructor and entrepreneur behind Yoga With Adriene, a YouTube channel with 13.2 million subscribers. “But I figured we could gently alter it to make it more lived in and warm.”
Mishler initially sought help furnishing the space, but her collaboration with Oregon-based designer Molly Kidd, founder of her eponymous studio, soon evolved into a renovation. “I was recovering from burnout, planning a wedding, and running six businesses,” says Mishler. “I knew I needed help making the space feel like home, but also like a creative refuge.” —Kristen Flanagan
Bobby Flay’s Refreshed Tribeca Apartment
It would surprise anyone that, after a six-month renovation, Bobby Flay’s kitchen was virtually untouched. The chef, restaurateur, and TV personality spends plenty of time cooking off-screen, but the kitchen was the only part of his Tribeca apartment that was exactly as he wanted it. “I really liked my apartment,” says Flay. “But I really wanted to love my apartment.”
Flay bought his 3,800-square-foot loft after being charmed by the building’s historic bones and 14-foot-high ceilings. But almost a decade later, his interiors naturally looked dated. And so there was a decision to make: Change the scenery and relocate, or change the scenery and renovate. —Keith Flanagan
Bethenny Frankel’s Tulum-Inspired Florida Home
When Bethenny Frankel and her daughter traded Greenwich, Connecticut, for the South Florida sun this past summer, she brought a clear vision—and the kind of opening monologue only Frankel could deliver: “Think padded cell with some warmth,” she told her designer. “I don’t want any color. I don’t want any personality. I’ll add the personality on my own.” It was classic Frankel. In other words, the opposite of “Liberace, Versace, la cucaracha”—a reference Bravo devotees will immediately recognize as her description of her Real Housewives of New York costar Jill Zarin's apartment.
Despite her tongue-in-cheek mandate, the former RHONY cast member and Skinnygirl founder ended up with a home that feels more serene than sterile—a streamlined, contemporary take on classic Floridian design. “For me, walking into a home and understanding where you are is critical,” she says. And in this one, there’s no mistaking it—sun pours into a grand, double-height living room, palm fronds frame every window, and a long linear pool slices across the backyard.—Chiara Dello Joio
The Epitome of Romance in an 850-Square-Foot Brooklyn Heights Apartment
“The number one rule for a romantic life,” says Talia Mayden, “is never to use overhead lighting.” On this particular morning, the 30-inch paper lantern suspended from Mayden’s living room ceiling happens to be on, and to underscore the point, she rises from her seat to remedy the issue. To a visitor’s eye, the light switch is nowhere to be found—that is, until a tintype photograph is plucked from a ledge near the front door to reveal a white plastic switch plate. In an instant, the lantern goes dark, ceding to flickering candles and late-morning sunlight.
Mayden’s one-bedroom apartment, nestled on the parlor floor of a Brooklyn Heights brownstone, is full of intentional gestures designed to elevate the everyday—or, at the very least, to disguise it.—Shoko Wanger
Lenny Kravitz’s Regal Paris Refuge
Superstar musician Lenny Kravitz has loved Paris since he first landed there in 1989, at 25, to promote his debut album, Let Love Rule. Finally, in the early 2000s, he felt it was time to find a pied-à-terre: “a little apartment, maybe on the Seine—one bedroom, two bedrooms, maximum—where I could write and hang out,” he recalls. “One day, the real estate agent says, ‘I have something. It’s not what you’re looking for, but you need to see it.’ ”
“It” was the grand mansion of Countess Anne d’Ornano, the widowed former mayor of Deauville, a 1920s confection set on a leafy cul-de-sac next to a clutch of embassies in the conservative 16th arrondissement. With her children grown, the countess found herself more at her Norman estate, with poetic gardens by Louis Benech, than in the Paris house, and had decided to sell. —Dana Thomas
A Highly Minimalist Spanish House
In 2011, Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was published—and the world found a new guru. Kondo recommended that we keep only items that “spark joy.” With this approach, she wandered through her clients’ homes in her Netflix series, organizing their lives by guiding them through how to choose what to keep and what to discard. On a visit to the Spanish home of architects and artists Paul Antón and Bea Aiguabella, Kondo might not find much to work with—the couple already follows her precepts. “This probably comes to us from our academic training,” Antón says, and then he refers back to a much older advocate of restraint. “Adolf Loos already said it in his book when he equated ornament with crime, and we agree with him.”—Marina P. Asins
An 800-Square-Foot NYC Apartment Kitted Out With Custom Storage
When beginning a renovation in a 1910 Upper West Side town house, the pièce de résistance was destined to be the kitchen. “We wanted to highlight a luxurious green kitchen that we foresaw as the inevitable heart of our home,” homeowner Shea Buckner says. Matt Bidgoli, one half of Perifio Interiors with partner Raphael Portet, was happy to make that dream—and beyond—a reality. Knowing the owners were creatives—Buckner is an actor and his fiancée, Martyna Frankow, a model—was a selling point for the project. “They’re definitely open to the world of color,” Bidgoli says. The couple desired “something that was classic but still had a little bit of a modern edge and was very livable,” he continues. —Kerry Pieri
Zooey Deschanel and Jonathon Scott’s Maximalist Manhattan Pad
Forget 2024’s TikTok dating mantra: “I’m looking for a man in finance.” Zooey Deschanel found something better: a guy in construction—six-foot-five, with a thing for plaster cornices. Step into the crisply detailed, Georgian-inflected apartment the actor and musician shares with fiancé Jonathan Scott, one half of HGTV’s Property Brothers, and the appeal becomes obvious. For a design fan, getting engaged to a contractor might be the ultimate fantasy. Not only do you find the love of your life—you also get really nice moldings.
And mullioned windows. And French doors. And custom case goods. Not to mention retractable media screens that descend from the ceiling. And kitchen millwork so snugly built you might be tempted to open and shut the cabinets and drawers all day, just for fun. “He won’t stop until everything is perfect,” says Deschanel. “And anything I can think of, he can execute.” —Catherine Hong
Kendall Jenner’s Mountain Getaway
A certain fearlessness is required to commit to a sectional sofa fashioned from 50 yards of Lee Jofa’s bold Hollyhock Handblock print, the granniest grandma-chic fabric. But under the direction of interior designer Heidi Caillier, the iconic floral was stretched over an expanse of down in a Los Angeles workroom, shipped to a top secret mountain location, and deposited in Kendall Jenner’s new living room.
A less expected match made in heaven has never existed. “I’m beyond happy with that couch,” says Jenner. “There has never been a doubt in my mind about the fabric. From the moment I saw it when Heidi and I started working on this project, I never wavered.” —Christine Lennon
Christopher Meloni’s West Village Sanctuary
When actor Christopher Meloni—best known as NYPD detective Elliot Stabler in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit—and his wife, designer and artist Sherman Williams, went hunting for a new home, one thing was nonnegotiable: a view. In both SoHo and near Central Park, the couple had watched prized vistas disappear as high-rises went up around them. “The views are important to us,” Williams says. They found what they were quite literally looking for in a sprawling two-level residence with wraparound terraces and 360-degree city views. Most importantly, it was in the West Village, an area protected from high-rises because of historic preservation. Originally carved into six separate apartments but owned by one person, the town house presented both opportunity and challenge. The main issue was stitching all those smaller spaces into one cohesive whole. Architect Alexander Loyer Hughes suggested starting fresh—gutting the interiors, working around the immovable pipes and structural columns, and threading in a new connecting staircase. “The building is really strict,” Hughes notes, “so approvals and paperwork took time and lots of patience.” —Gay Gassmann
Susan Lucci’s Bright Long Island Home
For more than 40 years, the Long Island house that Susan Lucci shared with her husband, Helmut Huber, held the story of their life together. So when the television icon began considering a renovation, it wasn’t about erasing the past—it was about honoring it while inviting in something new.
“After I lost my husband, I asked myself, ‘Am I supposed to sell and buy a condo? Should I move to the city?’ In the end, I realized how much I value this house,” says the All My Children star, who bought the Garden City property with Huber in 1978. “I see my husband everywhere—but in a good way. I decided to redo it and make it a happy place.” —Paola Singer
Walton Goggins and Nadia Conners’s Hudson Valley Escape
Actor Walton Goggins and his wife, writer-director Nadia Conners, want to make one thing very clear about their decision to quit the West Coast and plant their family flag in the Hudson Valley. “We weren’t running away from Los Angeles. We were running toward something,” insists Goggins, a standout player in the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus and an actor renowned for portraying villains and antiheroes with a certain sinister silkiness. “We loved our home in LA. It’s the city where our son, Augustus, was born and raised, the city where I became the person I always wanted to be, culturally, spiritually, not just career-wise,” the Georgia-bred talent adds. Nevertheless, the siren call of the Hudson Valley would not be denied. Goggins and Conners had visited the area for years, renting homes and flirting with real estate listings, but it was the COVID pandemic that finally propelled them eastward in 2021. “The pandemic opened windows of self-perception and possibility. It was an opportunity to do something different, not to start over from scratch but to change, to evolve,” the actor explains. —Mayer Rus
