Lionel Richie’s House: Where He & His Family Call Home

Tonight on CMT, stars from all over the country come together to honor the late Kenny Rogers. Interviews and virtual performances from those entertainers will be featured throughout the night, and Lionel Richie will be one of those stars performing from his home.

Lionel Richie spent years working on his house alongside architect Robert Attree and designers Peter Schifando and J. Jonathan Joseph. The house features 28 rooms, according to Architectural Digest.

“I feel about my home the way I feel about my music: You have to take chances,” he told the Digest. “When I wrote All Night Long’ as well as Three Times a Lady,’ it was dangerous, because at the time black guys were singing neither calypso songs nor waltzes. But since you only get one shot at life, let’s make it a challenge. That’s how I feel about this house.”

Richie’s ‘American Idol’ Co-Hosts Saw the Inside of His Opulent Home

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During the 2018 season of American Idol, judges Katy Perry and Luke Bryan invited themselves over to have dinner at Richie’s house. Bryan revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live that he had never seen anything like Richie’s mansion.

“Every ceiling in his house is different,” he said. “We have one thematic ceiling. I have one that’s got some oak on it, big oak beams. Lionel, the bathrooms have different ceilings. It’s amazing. It’s like a museum.”

The country singer also shared that Richie is great at holding dinner conversations and telling throwback stories. One story in particular involved Richie, Prince and Michael Jackson together, leading Bryan to say “Wait. Do you realize what you just said?”

The Mansion Has a Theme of Travel and Wanderlust

According to Architectural Digest, Richie said what he likes to do in his home is to show traveling and applying everything he’s seen in other countries. A photo tour of the home is available online.

call the rooms in my house destinations. If I want to be in a suite in Paris, I go upstairs to the bedroom and close the door. Italy? I walk outside to the stone path bordering the property and look back to see the cardinal’s house,” he said. “With my career, I have to get on a plane every other week. So when people ask, Where do you go for vacation? I say, I go home.”

The living room in the home is inspired by Richie’s visit to Poland’s presidential palace and features mirrored effects on the wall achieved by layering paint several times and then buffing and polishing it like stone. The house also features high ceilings, dramatic staircases and sweeping views.

According to Virtual Globe Trotting, the home is worth over $11 million now. Richie purchased the home in 1999 for $6 million.

Richie talked of his and his now ex-wife Diane’s first job together in the mansion, which was uncovering the wood floors that were buried under white carpeting and the entrance’s limestone walls that were hidden under varnish.

“A house is like a human being,” muses Richie. “There’s something wonderful about an 80-year-old with wisdom, but what did it look like when it was 19? What was the inspiration when the house was first built? That white stone was the house’s youth.”

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