Kate Hudson’s Blue Marble Kitchen Makes Her Feel Like a Kid Again

About 21 years ago, a “very pregnant” Kate Hudson stepped inside a charming 1930s Pacific Palisades residence that had been listed for sale. It was easy enough to envision a beautiful childhood there for her baby; she’d already lived one. Her mom, Hollywood legend Goldie Hawn, bought the place when Hudson was young. “My very, very foundational memories were in that house, with my grandma, my grandpa, all of my mom’s aunts and uncles, Kurt [Russell]—my pa’s—parents,” the actor tells AD, ruminating on poolside hangouts and sunny days spent lying on the bricks of the backyard as a little girl. “When I walked back into that house, I just had this overwhelming wave of nostalgia.”

Though the dwelling’s bones are over a century old, Hudson herself has witnessed several iterations of restyled interiors there. Hawn “completely remodeled it when she met Kurt—so really, that house was this sort of new life we had with Kurt and my mom.” They sold the abode and moved to Aspen full time when Hudson was about 12 years old. When she repurchased it in the early 2000s, she tapped AD PRO Directory firm Roman and Williams to update it from the previous owner’s retooling of the space. Two decades later, she felt the urge to overhaul—but sentimentality pulled her back into the past.

“I was going to blow everything out. And then the fires happened. We lost so many old houses in the Palisades that I went: I’m not going to tear these walls down,” the Song Sung Blue multi-hyphenate says. “So now, instead of doing this crazy remodel, I’m in the process of honoring the home as it was built.” First up on the list of the home’s 2025 facelift: a kitchen reno. The star has partnered with upscale appliance brand Café to bring the kitchen of her dreams, a project they’ve playfully titled “Blue Jean Baby” (do the first few lyrics of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” bring you back to your first watch of Hudson’s cult classic Almost Famous?), to life. AD sat down with the superstar to discuss reimagining the gathering space for a new era of the Hudson family.

“It really is the heart of the home,” Hudson says. “When you make that space something that your kids love to be in, they eat differently, you communicate differently—that’s where you really gather. If you make it a place that they love to be in, then all of the good things happen there.”

Architectural Digest: What was important to preserve in the kitchen? Obviously it had undergone some remodeling since your first years there, but was there anything from your childhood in there that made you say, “Okay, we’ll change some things, but this has to stay?”

Kate Hudson: No, there really wasn’t. To be honest, my mom was just like, “You need to redo this house, take it all out.” There are areas in the house—what I’m kind of focusing on next—that are a little more sentimental for me. But what we did in the kitchen just honors what it was. And I think when I get into the more intense remodel, there will be moments where I’ll be like, “Oh God, how do I tear that nook out?” But I will! I’m going to tear it out. We’re a big impermanent family. We don’t really hold.

You’re free spirits.

I think it’s important. I’m excited to honor the architecture and I think that it will always feel like the same house. But, there’s also room for new things.

Hudson was eager to weave lots of yellows and blues into the space. The hues remind her of the vibrance of Southern Italy.

We love the name “Blue Jean Baby” for the project because of how it ties Almost Famous to that statement marble. The whole space has this sunny feeling that people associate with you in general, and that marble is reminiscent of the caustic pattern you see in a swimming pool. Was a SoCal look what you were aiming for, or did you have another locale in mind?

Actually, it’s funny you say that. I’m half Italian. I love Italy, I love Southern Italy. I love how crisp and colorful it is in certain areas. And I really wanted it to feel like you are in a different part of the world when you walk into the house. I actually don’t want it to feel like California. I find California now has been this sort of…Calacatta marble, or always a ceramic tile. And I guess I’m trying to do something a little bit brighter, without getting too busy.

I feel like the older I get, the more connected to my roots I’m becoming. I would actually prefer to be living in Italy, but I can’t. So when I’m done with this house, I want it to feel like I just entered a Southern Italian home. The blue marble was the first pop of getting that Capri blue and yellow in here.

Blue Cristello marble, matte white Café appliances with brushed brass hardware, and plenty of fun blue and yellow accent pieces invigorate Hudson’s reimagined kitchen.

The marble is definitely the showpiece of the kitchen. Was that one of the first things you picked out?

Yeah, I want a blue and yellow kitchen. I want more primary colors without getting too distracting. I want it to feel like serene and modern. I don’t want it to feel cluttered. But I also want to be able to utilize more bright, fun colors than that sort of trended, muted greens and roses—I feel like creams and things that have been very popular for a while. I want more vibrancy.

Hudson and her family are already putting the new appliances—among them, four ovens—to good use. “We got a new ice machine, which gives you the nugget ice, so I’ve got a lot of happy kids,” she says. “They are obsessed with the refrigerator. That middle convertible drawer has become the newest, funnest thing in the house. I just fill it with snacks. And I gave them the lesson on the convection oven that has five different things in one, and now my 14-year-old is using that independently and loves it.”

What does a perfect moment in the new kitchen look like to you? What do you want out of this space?

You don’t really get to see it from the pictures, but it’s very indoor-outdoor. It opens completely up to the outside. My favorite thing is when the kids are running around and in and out of the kitchen and I’m cooking—I love to cook. I love the kitchen, it’s my favorite place in the world. I like when everybody’s sitting around, and having almost an early afternoon cook flow into an early dinner. I like it loud; I like football on. A loud, active kitchen is perfect to me.

I think one of the great things about getting all of these new appliances and working with Café is that I have so many ovens now. I have way more ovens than I did, and I love it because I’m always roasting 1,000 things. I did my first Rosh Hashanah [in the new kitchen] recently and I had my brisket and the carrots and everything going at once. And I was like: Oh, I could use every oven…. I have four ovens. When you get new toys in the kitchen, it’s like heaven.

The Shell star’s house has a fittingly Hollywood history that extends back before Hawn and Russell: “It was built for James Whale, who was the director of Frankenstein—if you’ve seen the movie Gods and Monsters [based on Whale’s last days], it was actually his home. So I started the beginning of the renovation as what I see as honoring the California ’30s home, but modernizing it.”