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Inside Ray Romano’s Cozy Desert Hideaway

Today Architectural Digest is welcomed by Ray and Anna Romano to tour their serene desert home in La Quinta, California. The Everybody Loves Raymond star and his wife worked with AD100 powerhouse Nate Berkus to design a beautiful and comfortable home, perfect for hosting their expanding family as two of their four children prepare to get married. Moving away from the mid-century Americana styles you’d typically find around Palm Springs, Berkus took inspiration from Italian country homes, creating a more muted space with all the charm of the Italian countryside. Before letting Berkus and Anna take the reigns on design, Ray only had a few specific requests for his new desert oasis. “I wanted some kind of cozy feel to it. That’s all. I was very vague,” he says. “And I fell in love with a bunk bed room that we saw at the Ritz-Carlton in Sundance that my kids stayed in. And I said, ‘I want a room like that.’”

Released on 12/12/2023

Transcript

Hey, A.D., Ray Romano here.

Welcome to my house in the desert.

This is where I come to get away and hide out.

Obviously, it's not working well 'cause you're all here.

But come on in. You're here. Let's go.

[jazzy music]

Okay, Anna, come on out. People are here.

This is A.D. Hi.

Say hi to A.D. Welcome to our house.

Yeah, you don't have to be that friendly.

[Anna] This is the great room,

TV room, whatever you wanna call it.

The interior designer that we used

was a man called Nate Berkus.

I'm sure many of you know who he is.

My wife knew who he was and kind of had a crush on him.

Still do. And still does.

[Anna] So we told him we wanted something comfortable.

Large enough for our family and not to feel extravagant.

Yes, cozy was my word. Cozy. That's the, yeah.

I had one word input. Cozy.

We wanna be able to hang out, watch TV at night.

And if I'm in the kitchen, it's joined together

and we can all be together. We wanna be able to be here.

He doesn't step in the kitchen.

Yes, but I wanna be able to just go, is it ready yet?

And not have to, you know, step away from the football game.

And we have four kids. Three boys.

So football's a big part of it.

And a girl. We have a girl.

Yeah, we'll talk about her later.

Me and the boys, we're Jet fans. And we watch together.

We cry together, if you're a Jet fan.

And I was told about this area

from a fellow golfer and I just loved it.

I loved that it's this little oasis kind of,

you feel like you're in another place.

And I told my wife about it. She fell in love with it.

And eight years later, we have this house here.

[Anna] Yeah. Yeah.

[jazzy music]

This is our gorgeous kitchen

with our beautiful oak cabinets.

My idea. Oak, yes.

I wanted maple.

I plan to do my Italian Sunday dinner here.

Meatballs, tomato sauce.

I don't cook anything.

He does not cook anything. No. Eggs. I cook eggs.

Maybe eggs. Eggs, yes.

He plays dumb a lot too, so that's why, right?

Some of it isn't playing. [Anna laughing]

Yeah, when the house fills up

with our four kids and maybe a couple friends,

it gets a little chaotic, but a lot would be on the island.

[Anna] Well, that's why we wanted a big island,

because we have a lot of stools

and everybody can sit around here.

[Ray] And hopefully, you know, grandkids soon.

Yeah, so we built this for future grandchildren.

Yeah. So hopefully they'll

see this at some point. Yeah.

And know this is all for them. They're not here yet.

They're not even twinkles in anyone's eyes.

Yes, but two of our kids are engaged to get married.

Yep. And I told them,

I'm putting a prize, a bounty out for the first grandkid.

I'm gonna, college tuition.

Although we're gonna do that anyway.

Yeah, we're gonna do that anyway.

So maybe, I don't know.

They're not gonna go to college.

Neither did their parents, so. Oh God.

Who are we kidding? [jazzy music]

[Ray] Okay, so we are in the dining room,

which by the way, if we're gonna be honest,

[Anna] we haven't used this yet. Yeah.

We're waiting to christen this room.

And we're gonna have, you know,

we may do a Thanksgiving here.

Yeah. We may do something here.

That's why the chairs are still pristine.

The chairs are still clean.

'Cause after- They won't be soon.

Just one dinner is all it's gonna take

and we're gonna have to throw these out.

Can we show you these lovely art deco garden gates?

So Nate brought these for us.

And when I had first seen them,

I was a little taken aback, but I believed in him.

So we totally went with his vibe

and look how gorgeous they look.

I love them.

They're actually one of my favorite pieces

in this whole house. Not cheap either, Nate.

What do you think? Not cheap at all, Nate.

Not cheap, no. Thank you very much.

But now I gotta do Ice Age 6.

[Anna laughing]

[light jazzy music]

So right now we're on our patio.

The pool, dining, our lovely seating area.

We wanted it to be large enough

so we could have a ton of people out here.

'Cause that's our plan is to have friends

and everybody just come and visit.

And we have this lovely fire pit, hot tub,

and we love the little tanning shelf over there.

So you can sit in the water, in the heat

and also get some sun.

What's cool is this is the golf course.

So when I drive by here, you know, I text Anna

and I say, Hey, we're coming by.

Yeah, and that's And she says, Okay.

And that's it. I have two favorite parts.

I love the whole house, but if I have to pick two favorite,

one is the bunk bed room, which I can show you later.

And the other is this little cool putting green over here.

So come on.

There's the fire pit with some strange balls in there.

Sometimes at night, I just wonder if they're gonna hatch.

It's not a big putting green.

It's a small one. But that's okay.

You can still work on like a 15, 20 foot putt.

Done.

[jazzy music]

So this is our primary bedroom.

Yes, it is.

The one input I had, one of the few inputs,

I want the TV close, I like the popup.

So this pops up. So it's important.

And then one of the best things is,

talk about popups, is you're laying in bed

and you're looking at these shades and you're like,

well, this is not a very inspiring shot to wake up to.

But then you push this button

and it slowly reveals why this kind of whole thing

[Anna] is worth it. It's gorgeous.

I don't use the word gorgeous, really,

but I'll make an exception. You have to. You have to.

Look at this. It's gorgeous.

It's gorgeous. I'll be having my morning coffee out there.

Yes. I don't drink coffee. And Ray will be golfing.

So I'll be out there by myself.

Well, if it's early, I'll be stretching

and then putting my eczema cream on, you know.

No, don't. Cut that part.

[Ray] I do like this paint.

I guess you'd call it a painting.

Yeah, artwork.

Artwork 'cause if you get a look of it,

I think of it as a, it's a smile.

Somebody's just smiling, right?

Oh, I like that. You never thought

of that, right? No, I did not think of that.

And you've never shared that. I've never shared it.

I keep a lot of things inside.

[jazzy music]

We're in the bathroom. Primary bathroom.

We're over here. Look how big it is.

I know. You could really have a dance party in here.

But it's beautiful. Yeah.

Walk-in shower. I like this.

I never close the door the whole way.

Okay. Just 'cause I'm afraid

it might get stuck.

Great. And soap on a rope, huh?

It's a throwback. You gotta have that.

It's a throwback, but come on.

So I love all the light fixtures in this home.

Nate and his team did a great job.

These are actually new, but the vanity lights are 1970s.

Is that antique? Is that considered antique?

I think so. Vintage. That means we're antique.

We're very antique. 'Cause we were born

before that, yeah. Yeah.

Vintage. We'll go with vintage.

And look at these two little kids.

Stupid kids didn't know what the hell they were doing.

That's us when we were probably 23.

I was 23.

And you're saying, What am I doing with this guy?

And I'm just saying, Wait till you see the house

you're gonna get to build.

But look at the perm, guys. Okay.

That's antique. Perm. Put it back. Put it back.

[jazzy music]

Right now we are in, and this is,

I'm being totally serious, my favorite room in the house.

And it was inspired by when we went to Sundance

for the film festival and the kids, they were adults,

had a bunk bed room that they were in.

And it was not your typical bunk bed.

It was big bunk beds that were built into the wall.

And I told Anna, when this house was getting built,

we must have- That was one of

your other directions.

We have to have a bunk bed room.

And it has to be the same style.

It's young, you know, it brings back-

Fun memories. Brings back the,

yeah, the memories. Of your bunk bed?

You didn't have bunk beds growing up.

No, but I read about them.

But when I do come here, when you're not here,

[Anna] the couple times I came- Yeah.

I sleep right here. Because look, you're in here.

First of all, how cozy is this? Second, look at this here.

You put your book, you put your medication,

it's whatever you got.

You put your little drink. Anything you need there.

What?

[Anna] You have your dirty shoes on the bed.

Okay, sorry. I'm just making a point.

[Anna] Off. Off. Making a point.

[light music]

All right, we're in the home theater.

This is another top of the list.

It's not the, you know, bunk bed's number one.

But this is right up there.

I mean, we started out with a big couch on the first level,

footrest, and all these reclining chairs in the back.

You know, a little place for the drinks and the whatnot.

And you know, it's a great place,

let's say you wanna watch a movie

like Somewhere in Queens, I don't know.

You know, I'm just throwing out there a movie

that is a great little family movie

and, you know, is now on Hulu.

But if you wanted to watch it on here, you watch it on here.

I don't know.

We're a big movie family,

but we're also the family that comes in

and says, Okay, what do we watch?

And 40 minutes later we're like,

all right, I gotta go to bed.

We don't watch. I gotta go to bed.

It's too late. We scroll

and scroll and scroll.

Look at the beautiful light fixtures.

They're like little jewelry all around.

And I love these little lamps too.

I don't know what they are, but I love them all.

Here's the perfect day.

You go out, you play golf, and you have your friends over

and you guys go to the spa or whatever.

We meet, we have a great dinner.

And then we have a, what I call the perfect cozy evening.

You come in here, you watch a movie,

it's so cozy, it's warm.

You kind of fall asleep.

You go in the cozy bunk bed room and you go to bed.

And you're gonna go to sleep.

And you dream of bubblegum and lollipops.

There you go. The perfect day.

[both laughing]

No sex. There's no sex in there, of course.

[both laughing]

[light music]

So this space was originally gonna be

to watch movies and his football,

whatever you call it, football day.

But then we decided to do a little home theater.

So this is really just like a lounge.

These are for the people who couldn't

get into the theater.

Yeah. Yeah.

They didn't make the cut. Yes.

But this is also like video games.

We have drinks and this is our-

[Ray] Yeah.

Candy drawer. This is my favorite type of candy.

Chewy candy. Yeah. Right.

That's our little snack placement. Movie theater.

Get your drinks in here. Play a little shuffleboard.

You guys all know this game.

There you go. That's actually pretty good.

And that's actually pretty good.

Oh, let's see. Anyway.

Obviously, I'm a natural.

Oh, it's not my game.

[jazzy music]

[Ray] We are in right now the Casita.

Casita, yep. Casita.

Which belongs to our daughter, our oldest child.

The only girl. Queen Alexandra, we call her.

But she requested a place

away from the smelly boys, I believe is how she put it.

[Anna] When we were designing this room,

I had her feedback.

She did have a lot to say and

[Ray] She always has a lot to say.

She has a lot to say.

She's actually one of our kids

that actually talks to us. Talks. She talks.

The other ones are quiet.

So she also liked vintage items.

So we have this lovely Swedish lantern lamp.

The chairs are from the 1800s.

We just put new leather on them.

These lamps, we loved. I knew this was vintage

'cause this kind of looks like, you know,

what the weapon the gladiators would swing around

when they fought the other guy.

So all our kids are good kids.

They are. And, you know,

Ally is a very hard worker.

Overachiever.

So we're happy to spend a lot of money on her.

[both laughing]

[upbeat music]

[Anna] Thanks, A.D., for stopping by.

It was fun. Now beat it. Come back anytime.

I'm sure she's gonna yell at me

'cause I must have said something wrong.

[door shutting] [light music]

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