Million Dollar Beach House: Meet Interior Designer Anna Cappelen
She's bringing a touch of Norway to the Hamptons.
Youtube Behind every successful real estate deal is a successful interior designer. Or so the cast of Million Dollar Beach House on Netflix would have us believe. The team of realtors on the new reality series all rely on the services of designers to come in and stage the properties before they show them to buyers.
Million Dollar Beach House: Who is Ann Cappelen, interior designer?
Interior designer Anna Cappelen, co-founder of the firm Curious Yellow, is one of the dream team who can sweep in and change the interior of a house to make it appeal to a potential buyer. The brokers on the show say that they will spend tens of thousands of dollars on a redesign before listing the property and that's where Cappelen comes in.
Where is Anna Cappelen from?
She is originally from Norway.
If you couldn't place Cappelen's accent on the first episode of the show, don't worry. We can tell you that she is from Norway originally and still does business in her hometown of Oslo. She lives in the United States now and lets someone named Elin Cappelen run the Oslo office of her firm. We assume that's her sister and that they share the kind of artistic talent that draws high-end clients.
Anna Cappelen used to do advertising design.
In a 2016 interview, Cappelen shared that she hadn't started out designing interiors. She actually has a background in advertising and had been an art director for many years. She made the switch to home design in about 2011 and said she discovered a lot of similarities between the two art forms. She switched up her aesthetic when she began to decorate homes, however. Her advertising style had been more hard-edged with a lot of dark colors and she says that home design drew her back to her Scandinavian roots.
Where does Anna Cappelen live?
Million Dollar Beach House is set in the Hamptons, a vacation destination that attracts very wealthy buyers. Cappelen has the inside track on understanding what's appearing to people looking to relocate there because she lives there herself. She has a cottage in Bridgehampton and spends her weekends there. The rest of the time she lives in New York City. She says she's been spending time out there for decades to get back to nature, something she loved growing up in Norway.
Cappelen's cottage in 2016.
Does Anna Cappelen have kids?
While it's impossible to tell from Cappelen's social media whether she is in a relationship or not, we do know she has a daughter named Mila. The teenager loves surfing and hanging out at the beach but she is also part of her mom's work. According to the Curious Yellow website, "Anna's daughter, also in love with creating and drawing, brings a lot of youthful and genuine creativity to the design process."
Cappelen and her daughter in 2019.
Cappelen does it all design-wise.
While audiences get to see Cappelen sweep in and take a house from cluttered to sleek before showing it to buyers, staging like that is only part of her business. She does private homes in both the Hamptons and New York City proper and she has a thriving business doing commercial designs for hotels and restaurants as well. If you want a hint of her style in your own house, you can even buy accent pieces and furniture that she has designed. But prepare for sticker shock: one lamp can run you $2,400.
Cappelen designed this very expensive lamp.
Not everyone likes her sense of style.
The issue with design in general is that it's really subjective. No two people have the exact same taste. That almost became an issue in an early episode of the series when a home-owners walked into the newly staged house and hated it. You could almost hear the record-scratch sound effect when the owner, who had been fond of cozy lines and cluttered surfaces, came into the open house to see that her house had been turned into a sleek, minimalist space that drew the eye towards the views, not the interiors. The broker in charge managed to diffuse the situation but it's clear that not everyone loves the Scandinavian look in home design.
Million Dollar Beach House is streaming on Netflix.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.