For the last two weeks, my Instagram feed has been overflowing with Valentine’s Day images—lush photo shoots of good-looking couples surrounded by rose bouquets, drinking champagne, and nibbling on chocolate-dipped strawberries in cozy rooms that are the essence of romance. But wait, stop the carousel! These rooms look familiar. Welcome to my very own House of Love—at least as art directed and styled to perfection for 1-800-Flowers’ latest Valentine’s campaign.
As a design journalist, I am unlikely to ever make it onto the silver screen, but my Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, brownstone apartment has starred in several productions. It’s been used as a shooting location in advertisements for everything from Warby Parker eyeglasses to an AT&T phone plan to an Italian tomato sauce brand. I’d like to think it’s my decorating prowess, but my agent (or, rather, my house’s agent) Andrea Raisfeld has a less romantic perspective: “Your town house isn’t super skinny, so that helps because a camera needs to pull back and move around.”
For interior designers, renting one’s primary home as a location can make financial sense—it’s already picture-perfect, so why not turn it into an asset? Not to mention that the IRS permits renting out one’s primary residence tax-free for 14 days or less each year. While platforms like Peerspace and Giggster let owners rent their spaces directly (Peerspace’s rates range from $85 to $250 an hour; Giggster’s start at $1,000/day), a boutique location agency like Raisfeld’s vets locations and charges a minimum daily rate of $3,500. (Raisfeld and I met years ago when I worked on editorial stories with her photographer husband, William Abranowicz.) The fees can be even higher in a city like Los Angeles, where, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the per diem starts at $5,000. And on the very highest end—an AD100 designer’s home, for example—the rate can be upwards of $50,000 a day.
I’m in good company—several of my design world friends have turned their homes into sets too. Interior designer Michael Maher’s 1861 Calvert Vaux house in Llewellen Park, New Jersey, is constantly in demand—most recently as the set of a Netflix streaming thriller. “The key is being relaxed,” Maher says. “Crews tell me, ‘You’re so chill.’ But I take the good stuff out of the house before they get here and get a site manager included in the fee.”
Agnethe Glatved, an art director in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, has rented her 1910 Colonial Revival out for shoots by brands like West Elm, DWR, and Brooklinen. Indeed, she designed her home with photo shoots in mind. “You need a space that can apply to various scenarios,” she says. “We painted the house Benjamin Moore’s White Dove, and none of our furniture is so precious it can’t be moved.”
Opening one’s home sweet home to a photo crew isn’t for everybody; to be honest, it can feel like an invasion. The Warby Parker team showed up with a clawfoot tub, which they planted in my living room for the illusion of the ultimate bathroom-slash-library-slash-boudoir. (You can see the final commercial here!) The Italian tomato sauce folks showed up with so many gallons of red sauce, I was terrified it would stain my marble counters. And then there was the menswear campaign featuring a K-pop star who locked himself in my bedroom for hours and scowled when I tiptoed in to grab a sweater.
And as much as I appreciate a beautiful bouquet of blooms, when the 1-800-Flowers crew showed up the night before the shoot last November, they covered every available surface in the living and dining room with crates of roses, lilies, tulips, and irises and asked me to turn down the thermostat to “keep the flowers fresh” until the photo crew and models arrived the next morning at 8 a.m.
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Offering up your home as a rental can also feel a bit like dating. For every match, there were many more that did not work out for unspecified reasons—even after we spent hours tidying up and welcomed the director and crew into our home for a walk-through. After several years of doing this, I now expect the rejection and take it in stride, though occasionally it can be devastating. I’m still getting over the disappointment of having our apartment make it to the final-two round for a 2014 Diet Coke commercial featuring Taylor Swift and dozens of kittens, only to get the dreaded note from Andrea: “It went away, release the hold.” Meow.
Do things ever go wrong? At one shoot at my place, the director used our vintage dining table as a “butcher’s table”; knife marks ensued. Fortunately, the damage clause in my contract paid for the refurbishment. At Glatved’s home, a crane lighting a third-floor window toppled into the garden, creating a massive crater in the grass. She, too, was compensated for the cost of restoration.
“I’ve had location owners who call and tell me, ‘I don’t want them tramping through my house in shoes,’” Raisfeld says. “I will usually drop those people. Someone who is game and willing, eager, and flexible will tend to be the person we show more often.” (For those interested in pursuing location rentals, West Coast homeowners can sign up with location agencies such as Home Shoot Home, CAST Locations, Universal Locations, and On Location Inc. In the New York area, aside from Andrea Raisfeld Locations, other agencies include Location Department, Scout Source, and Debbie Regan Locations.)
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Despite all the potential pitfalls, when the 1-800-Flowers crew arrived three months ago, I was ready. My bedroom became ground zero for hair and makeup. Our cat, Juniper, was sequestered inside a daughter’s bedroom, and the living room was crammed with camera equipment and stylist props. But the models were charming—one pair was a married couple—and they spent their downtime perusing my design coffee book collection.
At the end of the day, the crew thoughtfully spread flowers along the perimeter of the brownstone so that our neighbors could help themselves, while leaving my family multiple rose bouquets and trays of drizzled strawberries.
What’s not to love?
