This Pink-Obsessed Renter Knows Her ’80s Barbie Apartment Isn’t for Everyone

PublishedAug 11, 2022 1:30 PM EDT

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OK so some people inherit blue eyes or curly hair. California native Hannah Dahl’s family passed down a totally different kind of trait: the power to fully commit to a theme. “My grandma’s house is all purple and green—the carpet is green, the walls are purple, the sofa is green with purple,” says Dahl. Her mom’s gift played out a bit differently—in the 1980s she worked on the set design for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse (and won an Emmy for it!). “I thought it was the coolest thing ever,” Dahl continues. “I was so inspired by that funky, whimsical, doesn’t-really-make-sense-but-it’s-super-attractive style.” Dahl recently followed in their footsteps and created a fantastical world of her own, which she fittingly calls “The Dahl House.” The entire space is pink. “White walls and modern furniture doesn’t feel like me,” she shares. “My personal style is reflected in my home, and that’s something that’s really important to me.”

Not long after quitting her job at a residential interior design firm and dabbling in selling vintage home decor, Dahl started getting the itch to create a space that was truly her own. Plus, “it was getting a bit tricky living with my boyfriend in his little apartment when I started painting all our walls pink,” she says with a laugh. It took a few months of scrolling through listings before she found a rental in LA with Old Hollywood bones. “I wanted to make this life-size dollhouse that embodied how carefree your imagination is when you’re a kid,” she adds.

Dahl’s vision became this mashup of past memories: the ’90s, Alice in Wonderland, her old Calico Critter toys, vintage Barbie furniture, the pink and orange wall decals from her childhood bedroom that gave off strong Limited Too energy. But everything in her design plan got unified by the same bubblegum hue. After two tries to nail the exact wall color, Dahl landed on Sherwin-Williams’s Alyssum. The wallpaper was another challenge, mostly because it had to be temporary and few peel-and-stick brands make the antique-looking patterns she wanted. “Then I found a renter-friendly solution for regular wallpaper,” she says. Dahl stumbled across blogger Amal Iqbal’s hack that uses a nondamaging adhesive made from 1 cup water and ⅓ cup Elmer’s glue. With a handyman’s help, she and her boyfriend applied it to the living room and bedroom walls, plus the front door.

“I knew that if there’s a will, there’s a way to do a renter-friendly remodel,” says Dahl. The dream of wall-to-wall pink carpeting in the bedroom was one she just couldn’t let go of, but she knew she had to do it without wrecking the original hardwood. “It’s basically like a giant rug,” Dahl says of the floor treatment. Instead of stapling it down, she used double-sided sticky tape around the edges so it wouldn’t lift. In the bathroom, she followed the same logic and covered the floral tiles around the top edge with pink stick-on ones from Etsy.

Before Dahl even found her Dahl House, she started hunting high and low at estate sales for pink lacquer nightstands. Then “one Sunday night, I thought, there must be some gold over in Miami. Lo and behold, the first page I clicked on had an entire bedroom set,” she recalls. The catch? The estate sale was that same Thursday. She called up a friend who’s equally obsessed with treasure hunting, they flew out East, and Dahl spent hours on the phone with a trucking company coordinating the delivery.

Honestly, almost every object in her space has an unusual origin story. The big bar unit in the living room was a piece she scored in a trade (the other person got a Milo Baughman étagère). The horse figurine that looks like it was plucked off a carousel came from her favorite antiques store—her grandma has one just like it. “I named her Priscilla and brought her home with me,” Dahl says with a laugh. “She’s one of those pieces you can’t not have in your life.”

While the apartment was initially meant to be her personal creative haven (and a place to sleep when she’s not at her boyfriend’s), it quickly became a destination for musicians and influencers too. Dahl lends it out to other creatives who want to use her all-pink-everything setup for photo shoots. “Now I have this purpose of providing a space for people to get inspired and capture their take on it,” she says. “It’s not just mine anymore.”

With all the buzz around the upcoming Barbie movie, it’s no shocker that just last weekend an artist booked Dahl’s apartment to film a Barbie-and-Ken-inspired music video. “I love the whole lights-camera-action and seeing the way everything is illuminated so beautifully,” she says. When the record button is on, her home truly comes alive.

Lydia Geisel has been on the editorial team at Domino since 2017. Today, she writes and edits home and renovation stories, including house tours, before and afters, and DIYs, and leads our design news coverage. She lives in New York City.

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