Inside Cher's Malibu Home She Called 'One of the Greatest Passions of My Life' — and Tried to Sell for $75M — Photos

The singer's cliffside mansion delivers the oceanfront grandeur its price tag promises, but the real temptation is discovering how she made its most private rooms so wonderfully her own.

Cher's Malibu, California, estate returned to the market for $75 million in March 2023, inviting a peek into a home she spent years creating. Beyond those magnificent arches are some gloriously personal arrangements, including unusually pampered beauty essentials and a bedroom treasure with a Hollywood past worth getting comfortable for.

A Malibu Address Worth Bringing Home an Entire Palace For

Before there were bronze doors to sweep through, there was the business of finding the right stretch of coastline. Cher spent years searching for her ideal Malibu setting, eventually choosing a bluff she had passed countless times.

And honestly, with a panorama reaching from Point Dume toward Santa Monica and out to Catalina Island, you can understand the attachment. This is the sort of view that makes the sensible questions about square footage wait their turn.

The 16,000-square-foot mansion is set on 1.7 acres. It includes seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms, with room for a meditation space and a panic room.

Creating the house took almost five years under builder Wallace Tutt III. Cher arrived with hundreds of magazine pages she had collected, drawing inspiration from Venetian palazzos, European Renaissance villas, and the Moorish architecture of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

Her travels had already sharpened her appetite for something spectacular. Visits to Venice and to her friend Gianni Versace's Casa Casuarina in South Beach, Miami, helped inspire the Italian direction.

For the original interiors, she turned to longtime friend and designer Ron Wilson. Their collaboration on this residence was their 19th project together, which is a rather fabulous endorsement of knowing exactly whom to call.

In an Architectural Digest feature originally published in August 2002, Ron explained, "Both structurally and in terms of the interior, this house was Cher's concept." He added, "My job is to interpret what she's thinking." Their friendship began when they were teenagers in Encino, California, and Ron drove a Corvette that clearly made an impression. Cher admitted, "I had a huge crush on Ronnie."

Later, Cher and Sonny Bono bought their first home, a model house Ron had designed. The professional partnership continued through her subsequent homes, giving the Malibu project a lovely foundation of shared history.

Cher would describe their working relationship like this:

"I tell him what I want, he says I'm crazy, and then I get it. I bust his chops, but we laugh the whole time."

Once her imagination settled on Italian Renaissance architecture, she gathered 50 books and studied them. Apparently, commissioning a mansion comes with homework when your standards are this particular. So, let's take a look at the results.

Cher Designed the Garden Herself, and Wait Until You See the Pool

Walk toward the house and the landscaping immediately softens all that architectural grandeur. Forty palm trees dot the grounds, while a courtyard and fountain bring a little ceremony to the approach.

Cher took charge of the planting herself after becoming frustrated with the landscaping process. She wanted the tropical feeling she associated with Florida, knew some of the plants she liked, and researched the others. "When I think of trees, I only think of palm trees," she said.

That preference gives the estate a relaxed setting for such an imposing building. You get the drama of a grand European residence with greenery that seems entirely prepared for a California afternoon.

The entrance courtyard also had a pond whose fish became an unexpectedly emotional part of the project. Cher recalled that an egret ate them, admitting, "I never thought I'd have such an emotional attachment to fish."

Elsewhere, the amenities make staying home an extremely attractive proposition. There is a home gym, a home theater, and tennis facilities, so a quiet day on the property need hardly mean sitting still.

Then comes the infinity pool, and this is where the photographs get especially persuasive. From the living room, the water appears to meet the windows before extending visually toward the Pacific.

It is a beautifully calculated effect: the pool draws the eye outward, allowing the ocean to feel like part of the room. In the family room, that relationship with the water creates the impression of floating above a turquoise sea.

The entertaining spaces receive generous natural light, and the windows keep the coastline at the center of attention. For all the extraordinary objects inside, Cher gave the view ample room to perform.

"Every room has two different views of the ocean," she said in the designer's project account. "This house wraps its arms around you."

Additionally, the singer enjoyed knowing people locally and being able to move around with a degree of freedom, a precious benefit for someone whose arrival rarely goes unnoticed. Her affection for the water was more expansive still:

"I love looking at the ocean because there are no boundaries. It doesn't stop anywhere."

With that outside the window, choosing where to sit becomes a very pleasant domestic problem.

Cher Went Shopping for History, and Brought Home Something Fit for a Queen

The building's surfaces deserve their own unhurried inspection. Limestone and marble came from Italy and France, while custom hardware and tiles were sourced from Spain and Morocco.

Hand-wrought bronze doors add weight to the entrance. An 18th-century Venetian marble balustrade, purchased from William Randolph Hearst's collection at San Simeon, brings a remarkable piece of architectural history into the house.

The original three-story design included bush-hammered travertine and stamped-copper ceilings. Rugs came from Egypt, fireplaces from Mexico, and Gothic Revival chandeliers measured an imposing six feet by four feet.

There was even a tapestry that had once hung in the court of Mary, Queen of Scots. A housewarming gift would have to work very hard to distinguish itself in this company.

Yet Cher wanted these substantial materials to feel inviting. In the original living room, velvet and silk damask softened the presence of a large stone mantelpiece hand-carved in Mexico. The limestone flooring required its own intervention. The slabs arrived looking too perfect, so their edges were hammered to give the stone more character.

For the loggia, Cher found Florida artisans to carve the marble by hand and brought them onto the property. Their work took two years, an impressive commitment to getting an arch just so.

Religious paintings occupied the wall space available between the many arched windows. One favorite depicted Jesus and Mary Magdalene in a garden of sunflowers, a work Cher discovered at Marcel Pousse in Paris. Its unusual clothing caught her attention. "And I'd never seen a picture of Jesus in a caftan," she recalled.

Even the kitchen, a room Cher cheerfully admitted she could live without visiting, had to meet her standards. When its original floor displeased her, she returned to the granite yard and chose Brazilian granite with opal inclusions resembling butterfly wings.

Naturally, the cabinets then needed repainting to suit the new floor. Even a reluctant cook can have extremely enthusiastic opinions about the finishes.

Over the years, designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard helped guide the residence through further transformations. Writing for Architectural Digest in 2022, he recalled beginning his work on the home roughly 16 years earlier.

The original Gothic mood eventually gave way to a mixture of Indian, Moroccan, Venetian, and Buddhist influences. For that change, an auction cleared out furniture and collectibles, although Cher retained a pair of Egyptian vases, an Egyptian mummy head, and her Oscar.

A woman has to keep a few essentials.

Artists painted Eastern motifs on the ceilings, while distressed mirrors and Moroccan-style lighting gave the rooms a softer atmosphere. Museum-quality Asian art and custom furnishings became part of the home's later character.

During a more recent refresh, Martyn introduced turquoise, one of Cher's favorite colors. The house could evolve without losing the exuberant taste of the woman who imagined it. Her involvement never became casual, either. While touring during the original construction, she flew home almost every weekend and rejected anything she disliked.

"I can get a lot done in a short amount of time," she said. "You have to have an open mind but make decisions in the moment." That sounds like excellent advice for decorating, provided everyone carrying the samples can keep up.

Naturally, Cher's Bed Has Its Own Hollywood Backstory

Cher's private suite includes her bedroom, bathroom, lounge, and dressing rooms. Here, the architectural spectacle becomes something more intimate, with Venetian-style windows framing the coastline around her.

"My bedroom has been my sanctuary, my fortress, really my very special place," she said.

Her attachment to a versatile bedroom began long before this estate. When she and Sonny had little money, they bought pieces from junk stores and concentrated their decorating budget on the bedroom.

That early arrangement shaped how she used the space afterward. It became somewhere to work and spend time with friends, giving comfort a practical purpose beyond sleeping.

The original Malibu bedroom reflected that approach. A handwoven rug softened the stone floor, while a satin-covered bed stood on a stone platform beside 19th-century English cabinets. Generously sized seating upholstered in velvet and silk made lingering easy.

In its later incarnation, the walls and drapery acquired an especially personal design. Henna patterns painted on Cher's hands at a wedding in India inspired stenciling on raw silk, created using tea leaves and coffee grounds mixed with umber pigment.

That is a wonderfully specific souvenir to bring home. Instead of placing a reminder of the trip on a shelf, she let it become part of the room around her. The private sitting area is enclosed by mashrabiya wood panels hand-carved in Fez, Morocco. Their intricate workmanship brings another carefully chosen craft tradition into the suite.

The bed, meanwhile, has credentials worthy of its occupant. Her antique Syrian bed is inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ebony, and exotic fruitwood, with a history reaching into early Hollywood.

Bought at an MGM movie-set auction, it formerly belonged to costume and set designer Natacha Rambova, who was briefly married to Rudolf Valentino. Sleeping arrangements rarely come with such an interesting previous owner.

Off the primary bathroom, a turret contains a raised platform furnished with a large mattress and pillows. Cher uses the spot to lounge and watch dolphins, a pastime that makes the usual bathroom-adjacent storage cupboard seem terribly unambitious.

The suite also includes two closets and a meditation room. Privacy here comes with enough space to choose precisely how to enjoy it.

Even the Wigs Have Their Own Carefully Managed Address

Of course, a home this personal must accommodate Cher's extraordinary wardrobe of hair. Enter the climate-controlled wig room, reportedly capable of housing up to 100 hairpieces.

The collection is arranged on shelves and display heads, organized by color, according to The Times. For anyone who has ever lost a hairbrush five minutes before leaving home, this level of order is deeply seductive.

Martyn also noted that dedicated glam rooms, with salon and makeup areas, had become a common request among his clients. Cher's version naturally accommodates the hair changes that have long been part of her public style.

Their own partnership began with an entrance she made through deep-red velvet curtains. She wore a leather jumpsuit and a diamond feather earring reaching toward her shoulder blade, giving the decorator a fairly unmistakable introduction to his new client.

"That was it. Love at first sight," he recalled.

His first commission for her was a Hollywood penthouse inspired by India. He bought the facade of an Indian palace, dismantled it, and used its fragments to help create the apartment.

The relationship grew beyond decorating, with shared Christmases and family vacations. It also involved the occasional very late appointment, because Cher's desire to choose her surroundings did not disappear when she was exhausted.

Martyn recalled presenting fabrics and colors while she rested in bed after touring. "At the end of the day, this is a service industry and if your client wants to meet you at 11 o'clock at night, well there you are in your pyjamas with your fabric samples."

By 2023, he was considering what her next home might become, suggesting she could lean toward something more modern. His prediction came as she was enjoying her relationship with music executive and producer Alexander Edwards, although Cher had given no reason for wanting to move.

She had, however, explained her feelings about the Malibu house in full. "This house has been one of the greatest passions of my life," she said in 2022.

"I have enjoyed every moment of its creation and evolution, but now it's time to pass this magic on to others."

Alas, the singer hasn't had an easy time selling her intricately decorated mansion. TMZ reported on March 17, 2023, that the estate had been relisted for $75 million, following an $85 million listing in October 2022 that was subsequently withdrawn.

The outlet put her original purchase in 1989 at $2.95 million and named Drew Fenton and Robert Kass of Hilton & Hyland as the listing agents. An earlier attempt to sell, in 2009, had carried a $45 million price tag; she stayed when a suitable alternative failed to materialize.

The later sale attempt also ended without a buyer. In July 2026, Realtor.com reported that Cher had taken the property off the market in August 2024 and that records still placed it in the trust she originally used to purchase it. And this November, she'll be hosting a dinner party for charity.

For all its grandeur and whopping listing price, the loveliest part of this property is how much pleasure she took in making it. Somewhere between choosing a finish and approving another late-night fabric sample, Cher built herself a place where being home could feel every bit as thrilling as going out.