Barbie and Ken unveil bright-pink lifesize dollhouse in Malibu
CategoriesInterior Design

Barbie and Ken unveil bright-pink lifesize dollhouse in Malibu

Rental website Airbnb has unveiled Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse, an all-pink California mansion with an outdoor disco, infinity pool and Western-themed bedroom.

Located on the oceanfront in western Malibu, California, the lifesize dollhouse is being rented out by Barbie’s partner Ken via an Airbnb listing written as if by the doll himself.

Kendom saloon door
“Kendom Saloon” welcomes beach house guests

The house, which was previously listed by Airbnb for Barbie’s 60th anniversary in 2019, has had a recent update to give it more “Kenergy” and mark Barbie making her live-action debut in the Barbie film starring Margot Robbie.

“We all have dreams, and Barbie is lucky enough to have a house full of them,” Ken said. “But now, it’s my turn, and I can’t wait to host guests inside these one-of-a-kind – dare I say, one-of-a-Ken? – digs.”

Pink bedroom in Barbie's Malibu Dreamhouse
A cowboy-themed bedroom nods to Ken’s style

The large oceanfront house features a pink bedroom decorated with cowhide rugs, cowboy hats and horse-printed throws as well as a closet from which guests can borrow Ken’s fringed cowboy shirts and his guitar.

Some of Barbie’s clothing, including the iconic high-heeled pink shoe with a fluffy feather decoration from the movie, also hang in the closet.

The closet in Barbie's Malibu Dreamhouse
Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse is located by the beach in California

At the centre of the building, on one of the house’s many terraces, guests can make use of an outside disco dance floor in pink, purple and yellow with its own DJ deck.

“I’ve added a few touches to bring some much-needed Kenergy to the newly renovated and iconic Malibu DreamHouse,” Ken said.

The Dreamhouse also has a bright-pink outdoor lounging area, an outdoor gym – complete with a barrel filled with “beefy body brine” –  a pink outdoor kitchen with a barbecue and an infinity pool.

Other details that nod to Ken’s takeover include a Western-style swing door, decorated with an image of a horse and the words “Kendom Saloon”, and a crossed-out “Barbie” sign above the outdoor kitchen that now reads “Ken”.

Outdoor disco dance floor in Barbie house
Guests can disco outdoors

Guests can enjoy nearby activities such as shopping, surfing and roller blading on the boardwalk, and will also get to take home their own set of yellow-and-pink Impala skates and surfboard.

Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse will be available to book for up to two guests each on July 21 and July 22, 2023, with bookings opening on 17 July.

Outdoor gym in Barbie Dreamhouse
An outdoor gym features weightlifts and “body brine”

“All stays will be free of charge – because Ken couldn’t figure out how to put a price on Barbie’s Malibu DreamHouse – after all, Ken’s thing is beach, not math!” Airbnb said.

The company will make a one-time donation to the charity Save the Children in celebration of the Barbie movie.

The film was recently in the news as it made “the world run out of pink”, while a recent book explored Barbie’s Dreamhouse through the ages.

The imagery is by Hogwash Studios.

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“The world ran out of pink” due to Barbie movie production
CategoriesInterior Design

“The world ran out of pink” due to Barbie movie production

The sets of Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie movie required such vast amounts of pink paint, they swallowed up one company’s entire global supply, according to production designer Sarah Greenwood.

Speaking to Architectural Digest, Gerwig revealed that the team constructed the movie’s fluorescent Barbie Land sets almost entirely from scratch at the Warner Bros Studios Leavesden – all the way down to the sky, which was hand-painted rather than CGI rendered.

Barbie Land in Barbie movie
Barbie Land sets were built from scratch in a movie lot

“We were literally creating the alternate universe of Barbie Land,” she told the magazine. “Everything needed to be tactile, because toys are, above all, things you touch.”

To recreate the almost monochromatic colour palette of Barbie’s Dreamhouses, the set design team had to source a bottomless supply of pink paint to cover everything from lampposts to road signs.

Barbie movie cast dancing in a pink town square
Almost everything from lamp posts to sidewalks is rendered in vibrant pink

In particular, the production used a highly saturated shade by US manufacturer Rosco to capture the hyperreality of Barbie Land.

“I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much,” Gerwig told Architectural Digest.

So much paint was needed, in fact, that Greenwood says the movie’s production caused a worldwide shortage of that particular hue.

“The world ran out of pink,” she joked.

Rosco later told the LA Times that the company’s supply chain had already been disrupted when the movie began production at the start of 2022, due to the lingering aftereffects of the coronavirus pandemic and the winter storm that shocked Texas the previous year.

“There was this shortage and then we gave them everything we could – I don’t know they can claim credit,” Rosco’s vice president of global marketing Lauren Proud told the LA Times, before conceding that “they did clean us out on paint”.

Margot Robbie in a pink car
Margot Robbie plays the movie’s main character

Since stills for the upcoming movie were first released a year ago, the all-pink hyper-feminine “Barbiecore” aesthetic has infiltrated the design world, with Google searches skyrocketing and the term accumulating more than 349 million views on TikTok.

Earlier this year, Barbie manufacturer Mattel collaborated with Pin-Up magazine to release a monograph on the architecture and interiors of Barbie’s Dreamhouse to mark its 60th anniversary.

“There have been so many books and entire PhDs on Barbie, but never really on her many houses and her furniture,” Pin-Up founder Felix Burrichter told Dezeen.

“So we thought it would be a good idea to make one and treat it as a serious subject, in the same way that Barbie has been treated as a serious subject over the years.”

The image is by Mattel.

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