Johnny Weir Tells Us What He Wants in a Dream Home, and It’s So Not What We Expected

Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images for Churchill Downs

It began with a simple tweet. While he was covering the Winter Olympics for NBC in South Korea, figure skating commentator Johnny Weir sent a missive that warmed our hearts.

I go between studying my skater biographies & looking for a new house. @realtordotcom @sothebysrealty #olympics #olympicclosets

— Johnny Weir (@JohnnyGWeir) February 14, 2018

It turns out the former Olympic skater is ready to make yet another daring leap—into homeownership! We wanted to learn more about Weir’s housing search and what home means to the commentator known for his over-the-top dedication to fashion.

We quickly learned his taste in housing doesn’t exactly square up with assumptions you might have. Despite his love for dramatic attire, he’s actually a down-to-earth dude when it comes to picking the locale of his dream home. (Marie Antoinette reference aside!)

The-Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles, France.

DEA / G. SIOEN/ Getty Images

Q: So, Johnny, what is your dream house?

A: My dream house is Versailles or the Hermitage.

But a common misconception about me is that I live in some very “Jetsons”-style, modern, very sleek, egg-shaped house on top of a building somewhere in New York.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. I live and am looking for my first home in rural Pennsylvania. It’s where I’m from. I came back down here maybe four years ago, after the Sochi Olympics. Now I’m looking for a first home that’s going to be mine, and hopefully be in the family forever.

I was in northern New Jersey and New York for a long time, and it just got too hectic for me. I need a respite from my very fast-paced work life, and I just found so much comfort in being back home.

Q: Why Pennsylvania?

A: I’m very interested in privacy. I think that the towns that I’m looking in offer the opportunities to be somewhat secluded in many ways, and that helps me recharge.

It helps me find my balance to be in front of millions of people on television and over the top with the hair and the makeup and the whole thing.

I need a balance, so I need to be in the rolling hills. I need to be outside with no makeup on.

Johnny Weir skates during the Bank of America Winter Village at Bryant Park’s Annual Tree Lighting Skate-tacular on December 1, 2017 in New York City.

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Q: So … you don’t want any next-door neighbors?

A: Apartment living is not my thing. Condos are not my thing. I hate listening to other people coming and going, their sound systems, and their kids screaming.

I live under a lot of pressure on a daily basis, and to go home and have that annoyance of neighbors is not for me. I need to be able to completely unwind.

It’s taken me a long time to figure out where I want to live. You’ll never find me in a subdivision or an apartment again. It’s going to be a free-standing, private home that even Google Maps can’t find. I need to be secluded.

Q: Besides seclusion, what other filters are you using to narrow your housing choices?

A: I’m a first-time home buyer and I am single, and the only other person that really lives with me is a very small dog, so we don’t need a lot of space for us.

But … my clothing and my wardrobe is going to require a bigger home simply because I’m going to need two full-sized bedrooms to turn into a giant closet.

Fashion is just a big part of my life and my job, and I need a beautiful master suite. I need the space to be able to create an incredible wardrobe and dressing room. It’s going to be pretty fantastic. Any of the best boutiques you’ve ever seen or heard of won’t even be a rival for my closet.

Q: Are there any other must-haves?

A: I’m looking for land. My parents are both 61, and I want a home with enough acreage to actually build a second home on the same property for my parents. I want them to stop worrying about mortgages and bills, because they sacrificed so much for me and my career and my life that I want to be able to do something nice for them. Plus, it’ll just be awesome to have my parents close by.

Q: Are you the type of home buyer who can envision a remodel, or do you want a turn-key place for your first home?

A: Just for how particular I am, I originally thought about building a home. But considering my lifestyle and how rarely I’m actually home, I thought that might be the devil’s playground if I started building a home and couldn’t be completely hands-on because I’m pretty OCD.

I definitely am not against renovating, but I need something with a good base to start from.

Figure Skater Johnny Weir performs during the 2014 Artistry On Ice Beijing at Beijing MasterCard Center on July 25, 2014 in Beijing, China.

Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

Q: Any particular decor trends you love right now?

A: Well, I love traditional touches. There’s one home in particular I’m very interested in right now that has a very old fireplace with two of those beautiful, old-fashioned wood storage things that are embedded in the wall next to it. Little things like that.

At the same time I love over-the-top opulence. I love a crystal chandelier. I love a gold-leaf ceiling in a powder room.

Q: Are you going to do the decorating yourself or hire an interior decorator?

A: I’d like to handle it all myself. I have so many beautiful things that I’ve collected from all over the world, and I know how to showcase them. I know how to put them together.

Q: Is there a particular color or palette you have in mind?

A: I’m very into white and white spaces. White and gold will be my main colors, and then for accent colors, definitely beautiful greens, emerald greens, shiny greens.

Q: Any color we won’t find in your house?

A: Blue. It’s an unlucky color for me, and I am not a fan.

Marie Antoinette, Dir. Sofia Coppola, 2006,

Leigh Johnson / Columbia Pictures

Q: Do you have a role model or inspiration for your decor?

A: Essentially anything you see in Sofia Coppola‘s movie “Marie Antoinette.” That’s my style mood.

Also the artist Andrew Wyeth is local to the area I’m looking for a home in. There’s a painting [“Christina’s World”] that he did of a young girl lying in the grass looking up into this desolate sort of landscape with a home there, and that to me is Pennsylvania.

A rolling expanse of land and trees, and sort of those gray winter days when it’s about to snow. That’s what I want to feel like when I’m home.

Christina’s World (1948), Andrew Wyeth.

Museum of Modern Art, New York City/Wikipedia.org

Q: So you’re going for country-friendly?

Well, our country lifestyle is very welcoming and very forgiving and very happy to have people over. But for me, I want people to constantly feel uncomfortable in my house.

Q: What?

A: I want them to come over and feel like they can’t sit on anything. I’m very Joan Crawford in that way. I don’t want you to sit on my furniture. I don’t want you to stay for too long.

Q: You’re going to put plastic covers over all your furniture?

A: I don’t think I’m going to put plastic over everything. But I’ve worked really hard and really long to be able to buy a dream home and to fill it with beautiful things. So I love it when people come in—even if they’re my closest friends—they come into my home and they look around, but they never sit down because it almost feels like they shouldn’t!

Q: So … no housewarming party?

A: There definitely will be a housewarming party, but it’ll be family and my closest circle of friends. There will be a lot of wine flowing. There will be people that spend the night and people that stagger home in an Uber. When I throw a party, I do it right and people don’t leave until 5 in the morning.

Q: What’s the one piece of furniture in your home you could not live without?

A: I have a beautiful chair. It’s an antique and was a side chair in this mansion in Italy. It’s kind of decrepit, and it’s never been reupholstered or anything. It’s from some point in the mid-1700s, and it’s very old, and gold, and I don’t sit in it. But it has this very faded emerald-green velvet that has been rubbed within an inch of its life. It’s kind of my ideal as far as décor goes.

Figure Skater Johnny Weir performs during Artistry On Ice 2014 at MasterCard Center on July 25, 2014 in Beijing, China.

Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images

Q: Finally, what does home mean to Johnny Weir?

A: Home is kind of everything to me.

I wouldn’t be able to do what I do and have the focus to entertain millions of people every year if I didn’t have a home base where my things were, that smells like me, some place that is a sanctuary.

For me, it hasn’t been a life where I want to buy a bunch of homes and, “Oh, that’s my Lake Como home. That’s my Moscow home. That’s my New York apartment.” I’ve always wanted just one home base. I’m lucky enough to travel the world and stay in beautiful hotels all year.

But when I think of home, it’s just like this glowing presence of peace and happiness. That’s what home means to me.

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