This article originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Architectural Digest.
When Martyn Lawrence-Bullard set out to decorate Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne's expansive new home in the northern reaches of Los Angeles, he faced a fundamental question: How do you bring a dose of enlightenment to the dwelling place of the former front man of Black Sabbath—a.k.a. the Prince of Darkness?
The couple's previous design strategy—call it Contemporary Goth—will be familiar to anyone who watched MTV's wildly successful reality series depicting the squabbling domestic life of the charmingly dotty heavy-metal star and his family. The Osbournes, which aired from 2002 to 2005, won Ozzy legions of new fans and turned Sharon and two of their children, Kelly and Jack, into overnight celebrities. It also drew a bit too much attention to their six-bedroom spread on Doheny Road. "They would have carloads of fans driving by at three in the morning screaming, Ozzy, we love you!' outside the front door," says the L.A.–based Lawrence-Bullard.
Three years ago, with their children grown and settled into their own homes, the couple began looking for a new refuge. It was a welcome moment for Sharon in particular, who is known to have a roving eye for real estate. "I get itchy feet," she says. "We've never stayed in any place longer than seven years." After she saw the property they now occupy, set in a gated enclave called Hidden Hills with vistas stretching to the Pacific, the decision to decamp was an easy one. "I wanted a house with the best views, and I got it," Sharon says.
The next thing Sharon needed was help reducing her considerable number of possessions ("Our home looked like a furniture shop," she says), and she knew just the designer for the job. Lawrence-Bullard was a close friend; the two had bonded on an African safari hosted by Sir Elton John some five years ago. "I said to Martyn, Please make my house a home,'" Sharon recalls. "Tell me, what do I lose and what do I keep, and where do I put it all?'"
"I did have to control Sharon from buying everything she could see," jokes Lawrence-Bullard, whose free-spirited eclecticism complemented Sharon's acquisitive streak. "We pared down and chose a few beautiful, good things for the house," he says. The designer set aside the Moorish influences he's so fond of for a refined yet comfortable country-house feel, combining reclaimed-wood floors and Victorian-era barn doors with French antiques and painted-silk wall coverings. "I do love Orientalism—a little bit of that twist in things I have done for Cher and others—but I decorate for my clients and not for me," he says. "So I get an understanding of what they want first, and then I play with that."
The living room off the kitchen is the centerpiece of the home. "This is where Ozzy likes to sit and paint," Lawrence-Bullard says. "It's flooded with light during the day." A collection of Sharon's antique Italian puppets and dolls finds a setting here. Through the barn doors, in the kitchen, along with a profusion of English tea sets and vintage Americana, lies another prized possession: a rustic dining table that has been with the family for years. "Everything major that happens to them they carve into the wood," the decorator says.
Just steps away, a narrow staircase lined with framed gold and platinum albums tracing Ozzy's career leads down to a state-of-the-art recording and rehearsal studio. (Despite soundproofing, the master's metal jams "feel like a minor earthquake," Sharon says.) The rock star was given license to choose his own hue for the studio walls—"Paloma Picasso lipstick–red," notes Lawrence-Bullard—and the circular central atrium upstairs has another edgy touch: black Venetian-plastered walls. "I like to call them gray," says Sharon. At the bottom of the atrium banister is an ebony sculpture of Pan getting fresh with a nymph, which Sharon admits is "very naughty." When she let the piece slip away in an auction designed to shed their old Goth look, Ozzy insisted she retrieve it—even at a considerable markup.
Before Lawrence-Bullard's work began at Hidden Hills, the Osbournes had commissioned a major rebuilding project, taking the 10,000-square-foot house from seven bedrooms down to three. The renovation made space for enormous walk-in closets, in addition to his-and-her bathrooms and home offices. Sharon's office, which displays framed classic Cecil Beaton fashion photos, is where she runs the Osbourne brand, managing Ozzy's recording and global touring schedule as well as her own busy calendar (she cohosts CBS's daytime show The Talk and is a judge on NBC's America's Got Talent). Ozzy wanted his own office done up like a men's club, with one of the home's several working fireplaces. The array of rooms gives the place a welcome old-fashioned sense of privacy. "I'm very English," says Sharon. "I like to close the door and be in one room and then open it and go into another. So many homes in L.A. just don't have doors."
In the master bedroom, which enjoys a compelling view of the hills rolling to the coastline, Lawrence-Bullard invokes Ozzy's nickname from the early Black Sabbath days: "Can you believe the Prince of Darkness sleeps in a mirrored four-poster bed, with lilac painted-silk walls and satin curtains?" But the room is not entirely without an Ozzy-friendly touch—the designer pushes a bedside button, and a large flat-screen TV hoists slowly up from its hiding place near the foot of the bed. "He loves lying in bed watching the History Channel," he says. "And Hoarders."
Ultimately, for Sharon, the idiosyncrasies make the house. "People here in California tend to have very big homes, but they are like hotels—everything's beige," she says. Hers is more eclectic and personal. "It shows individuality," she adds. Lawrence-Bullard couldn't agree more. He calls it "very them. Easygoing but still opulent—with a little rock-star edge thrown in."
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