Kenzie Ziegler Is in Her Homeowner Era (2024)

Kenzie Ziegler has two phones. Not in the Kevin Gates way, or even in the business-versus-personal way. The singer has matching landline telephones (one fully functioning, one for aesthetics) that occupy prime positions in the home she bought last year in Los Angeles. For a typical 20-year-old—born just months after Facebook launched—owning a home and a landline is unusual. Yet, in the broader context of Mackenzie Ziegler, it just feels right, especially since both phones are rosy pink. “You’re perfect,” she said when her stepfather presented her with phone number two. “You’re absolutely perfect.”

By now, many of us are familiar with Ziegler’s taste. It’s obvious in the lashings of gold jewelry she wears and in the cheetah-print wallpaper she put up in her closet (which coordinates with her cheetah-print bed throw). Biting My Tongue, her brand-new debut album, was born of rarely feeling confident enough to speak her mind. Now Ziegler’s perspective oozes out of her every pore. And when it comes to her output—visual or aural—she will not compromise.

“I was always so scared to make my own decisions with everything—I always needed a second opinion,” Ziegler tells House Beautiful. “Nowadays, I’m really listening to my brain and my heart.”

She’s not without inspiration. From the output of digital It Girls like Devon Lee Carlson to obsessive online scrapbooking, Ziegler has had plenty of stimuli as she refined her personal style. The result is something akin to controlled chaos, oscillating between extremes: overtly feminine and masculine, minimalist or maximalist from one hour to the next. She’ll outfit herself in baggy jeans one day and the flirtiest minidress the next. “I was always so worried I’m overdressed or I’m underdressed, and I’m, like, No, it doesn’t really matter.”

While intimidated by upgrading from an apartment to a full-on, multi-bedroom, adult house, Ziegler has approached decorating with the same sense of adventure. Like many first-time homeowners, she takes design seriously but isn’t too serious about it. She’s undeniably inspired by style chameleon Rihanna, whose presence radiates from an enormous coffee-table book that Ziegler and her friends flip open to a new page every day. In true Rihanna fashion, Ziegler converted her home’s third bedroom into a closet, indulging her inner child with that cheetah-print wallpaper.

“It’s a full dream, honestly,” she says. “I always think, like, Oh my God, if I was 11 years old living in this house, I would have a cheetah closet.”

The closet was a DIY project the singer tackled with her older sister, Maddie—one of many the pair took on together. The two also styled the built-in bookshelves that greet guests in the dining area, filling each recession with little vignettes of thrifted antiques. (Ziegler recommends the Antique Mall in Sherman Oaks, along with other favorite thrifting spots.)

“The day I moved in, my sister and I decorated that shelf, and that’s kind of what I based the whole house on,” Ziegler says. “A lot of it was gifted to me, things my sister gave to me for my birthday or little trinkets I’ve collected. That is my favorite thing in the whole house.”

The Ziegler sisters are no strangers to teamwork. For the uninitiated: Kenzie and Maddie found fame on Dance Moms, a Lifetime reality show following the lives of talented young dancers and their families in Pittsburgh. The younger of the two, Kenzie was six years old when the series premiered; Maddie was eight. In the years since, Maddie has played muse to pop star Sia in a series of music videos while reaching stratospheric success as a model and actress, casting a long shadow as Kenzie pursued a music career.

“I feel like sisters are always compared no matter what,” Kenzie says of the pair’s life in the public eye. “It is just such a frustrating thing because it’s so hard to find yourself when you’re growing up because you’re being compared to someone else. But I think now that we do things that are so separate, we can still come together and work together and still be different people, which I just love because obviously when we were growing up we were both dancing. I think people are finally realizing, Oh, they’re completely different people.”

The two are also quite different when it comes to their homes. Maddie “is very perfectionist—if something is not right, she will be mad about it,” Kenzie says. “I’m kind of the opposite, where I don’t care if it looks insane…. All of her stuff is super, superexpensive, very picture-perfect. And, with mine, I mean, obviously I think my house is gorgeous, but I just love finding really weird pieces.”

It’s this approach that makes Ziegler’s first place feel like home to everyone who enters. She was determined to avoid hotel-like sterility—though, in the process, her house has become the ultimate crash pad. (“I sometimes come home and my three best friends are sleeping on my couch and I’m like, When did you get here?” she says.) An entertainer at heart, she had friends over for New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July. She hosts potluck dinner parties and has been bingeing Disney shows on her Sixpenny sofa (her biggest splurge and practically the only thing that’s not vintage) with friends while learning to crochet tops and bathing suits. Then there are the outdoor furnishings: a projector and firepit in the backyard for marshmallow movie nights, as well as spacious outdoor furniture and even a blow-up swimming pool.

There was clear skepticism among millennials when young celebrity homeowners like Emma Chamberlain and Kendall Jenner showed off their watercolor station and painting room in online home tours. But Ziegler confirms her generation’s penchant for staying in has resulted in a real investment in common creative spaces—just look at the DIY movement to recreate 1970s-style conversation pits.

“My house is kind of the house,” she says, laughing. “I love hosting because I’m like, I don’t have to leave. I can just stay here. That’s kind of where my mind is. If I’m here, then I’m good. I don’t really want to go anywhere else.”

Given her considerable fame—she’s accrued 15 million followers on Instagram alone—it’s only natural that Ziegler would self-sequester. She has come to anticipate fan interactions in specific areas of L.A. like The Grove, with Dance Moms obsessives picking her out from the crowd of young, fashionable twentysomethings. Recently, though, she’s observed a shift in notoriety as many Ziegler devotees become more familiar with her music than her stint on reality television. That feels like a relief, she explains, after a years-long battle to be taken seriously as a musician. “It’s kind of a pinch-me moment that I’m still doing it now and my dreams are coming true and people are relating to my music,” she says.

In moments of reflection, Ziegler retreats to her garden. When she first began touring homes, a backyard became a massive selling point. Space comes cheaper in the singer’s home state, and upon moving to Los Angeles she found herself pining for her family’s expansive property. As soon as she bought her San Fernando Valley home, she prioritized a garden makeover. With her mom’s guidance, she built raised garden beds that are now overflowing with zucchini, tomatoes, and strawberries.

“Our house in Pittsburgh looks professionally done, and it was just my mom,” Ziegler says. “I love that she comes over and gardens while I’m doing my dishes and I get to watch her,” she says. “It’s the most amazing, sweet, full-circle moment, and it makes me feel so at home, honestly.”

When she’s not touring or promoting Biting My Tongue, Ziegler is about to be occupied by another venture: a full-scale kitchen renovation. The room is too white, which doesn’t jibe with her style. She’s thinking monochromatic mauve red. “It’ll be really fun,” she says. Like any house project, it’s bound to be exhausting, expensive, and filled with decisions that demand self-assurance. That’s perfectly okay with her.

“I just know exactly what I want to do with my clothes and my music and my house,” Ziegler says. “I feel like it’s all a really good representation of the person I am today. It’s taken a while to find her, but now she’s here.”

In other words, the time for tongue biting has passed. There’s no phoning it in. Ziegler has no choice but to trust her instincts—and everything’s coming up (shades of) roses.

Hair: Eduardo Méndez
Makeup: Yasmin Istanbouli
Entertainment Director: Maxwell Losgar
Executive Visual Editor: Christina Weber
Senior Visual Editor: Stephanie Kim

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