A look inside Oprah Winfrey’s mammoth $90 million mansion

1. Small screen queen

It would be the biggest understatement of the century to say that you’re more than a little likely to know who Oprah Winfrey is. Simply put, this television mogul and public personality is not only one of the most famous people in the media, but also one of the most influential women on Earth.

It’s estimated that in light of the staggeringly wide-reaching media empire she has built for herself over nearly five decades, Oprah is worth roughly $3.1 billion. Naturally, it begs the question: where does someone with that kind of wealth live? What does Oprah’s home look like? It’s time to take a peek.

2. A gorgeous respite

It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Oprah’s mansion, which serves as her home base, is located in one the wealthiest communities in the United States. The community of Montecito is located just east of the Southern California city of Santa Barbara, fringed by the Santa Ynez Mountains and the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

Current listings in Montecito generally run – on the lower end of the spectrum – from $1 million all the way up to $85 million. Even Santa Barbara’s tourism site gives visitors the warning not to freak out if they happen across an incredibly famous person just casually strolling the streets. So how did Oprah decide to come to this exclusive locale in the first place?

3. A chance encounter

Oprah’s wealth comes as the perfect culmination of her charisma, intelligence, dogged determination, and slick career choices. When she first came to Montecito, she was well on her way to being a real estate mogul in her own right. But she hadn’t yet found what would become the home of her dreams.

That opportunity came in 2001 and it happened purely by chance. As fate would have it, Oprah was invited to a party in Montecito on the grounds of a gorgeous mansion. As she marveled at the scope of the place, she was utterly enchanted by its beauty. The owners couldn’t have dreamed of what happened next.

4. Oprah’s offer

Oprah immediately knew she had to have the mansion for her own. At the time, it belonged to an aeronautical equipment manufacturing giant, Robert Veloz, and his wife Marlene. Back then, they were living in the recently-rebuilt stone gatehouse which was 2,000 square feet. And the house was not up for sale.

But that was not going to get in the way of achieving a dream. Oprah was determined. She offered the owners a check for the eye-popping sum of $52 million. In so doing, she executed one of the biggest sales of a private home not just in California, but the entire nation. And what she received, in turn, was equally as extraordinary.

5. Fit for a queen

The grounds of the Montecito estate were first built in 1912, though they have been subject to various changes and renovations over the past century. Built in a sumptuous Georgian style, the entire complex covers roughly 23,000 square feet. From the grounds, one can enjoy breathtaking views of both the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

The mansion in its most current form was completed in 1959 and, adjusted for today’s market, is worth roughly $88 million. It contains in its hallowed halls a total of 14 bathrooms, 6 bedrooms, and 10 fireplaces. The abode offers a sweeping assortment of additional rooms, along with everything from a home theater to a wine cellar. And it would soon be hers. However, she’d go to great lengths to make it suit her.

6. Home at last

Bob Veloz and his wife agreed to Oprah’s proposal and sold her the home. The Montecito mansion was now hers for the taking! It was an incredible thing to take it all in. And now, she had to think about how she would take this property and make it feel more like her own.

First things first, Oprah’s mansion needed a moniker. As Oprah strolled the magnificent grounds of her new property and sanctuary with her friend Bob Greene, a fitness guru. She told him about her idea for a name: Tara II. She said it was because the place reminded her of Gone With The Wind. But Bob objected strongly, suggesting something else more symbolic.

7. Keeping perspective

Bob Greene felt that, frankly my dear, Tara couldn’t hold a candle to this incredible property. But apropos the American South, he wanted to remind Oprah to put things in perspective under the bigger picture of this auspicious moment. The fact that an African American woman who had been born into poverty in Mississippi was able to possess all this marked a historic moment.

Oprah has not been shy about discussing with candor the difficult circumstances of her life before becoming a world-renowned mogul. She was born to a single mother and was initially raised by her grandmother in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. Her family was in such a financial pinch that Oprah even had to resort to wearing potato sacks for dresses. And now, here she was with boundless opportunity. Bob had an idea.

8. Searching for inspiration

Bob Greene was deliberating over a potential name for his friend Oprah’s mansion. Suddenly, in a moment of inspiration, he knew she should go back to the Bible to serve as her muse. He dubbed the palatial residence the ‘Promised Land,’ and the name instantly resonated with her. This was to be the identity for her new sanctum.

Now she had her dream home, but she had yet to make it her own. It was time for a massive project: going through the immense space of the mansion and personalizing it to her liking. The style queen now had a daunting but exciting opportunity to decorate in her own style. For starters, there’s the library depicted above, filled with an extensive book collection befitting of this champion of literature. But that’s not all.

9. Fabulous foyer

This is the main entrance hall of Oprah’s mansion, which she refers to as her foyer. An elegant, fanciful banister graces the sides of her immaculately white main staircase, which curves up past creamy yellow walls. But despite her eye for art and her careful selection of furniture, one thing stands out most.

The entryway to Oprah’s mansion is filled with framed photographs of friends and loved ones assembled on the tables. These are objects that could be found, arranged in a similar fashion, in just about anyone’s home. It reminds us that despite her incredible wealth and status, at the end of the day, she’s still human. Still, as you’ll see, the rest of her house is surely fit for a queen.

10. Cooking up a storm

How does one prepare meals at home for the legendary Oprah Winfrey? The kitchen in Oprah’s mansion would obviously have to be unbelievably well-stocked, logically arranged, and spacious. But being as it is, this kitchen was all that, and more. When Oprah moved into her home the Promised Land, the state-of-the-art kitchen even contained its own fireplace.

While having a fireplace in your kitchen is admittedly a pretty neat idea, Oprah eventually decided against it. She opted to have it removed, but not because she disliked it. Oprah noted that when she has guests over, a natural inclination of her friends is to go directly into the kitchen. As she renovated, she wanted the kitchen to have more space so as to include them. Needless to say, the upcoming rooms in her behemoth estate are hardly lacking for space.

11. Reading room

This is the reading room at Oprah’s mansion, where every corner has had thought put into it. The first thing to be noticed is the large doll seated on the couch. Because Oprah grew up at a time when children’s toys often did not reflect her own skin color and because she grew up too poor to have many toys as a child, this doll must represent progress –both personally and as a society.

Oprah has always stressed how massively important it is to her that her fans stay engaged through reading, which is why she began Oprah’s Book Club. Her impressive book collection stretches across the back wall, yet she has remarked in the past that she would rather her guests admire from a distance rather than disrupt the carefully-selected order. Still, there’s plenty more to admire.

12. Welcome to the Promised Land

It’s only natural that Oprah’s mansion should contain a place for guests to stay, and why should it be any less sumptuous and extravagant than the rest of the house? If you are going to be invited to stay over by the Queen of Television, then you can surely expect that your surroundings will be a feast for the eyes.

The green striped couch has since been sold, along with the plush pillows coated with peonies and daisies. The entire set was priced at a tidy $3,000 at auction. And in a place as enormous as the Promised Land, this is not at all the only living room to be explored.

14. Space to relax?

This is yet another one of the living rooms in Oprah’s Montecito mansion. Right away, the first impression of the space is that it’s more than a little bit crowded. Everywhere you look, there are objects, whether it’s a candelabra, a picture, a mirror, or a piece of furniture. But Oprah also felt that way.

With such a gargantuan amount of space to call her own at the Promised Land, Oprah also has plenty of opportunities to constantly mix things up, to play with her design dreams in her own place and keep everything in flux. This living room, along with the other one, was slated to be renovated.

15. A meal with Oprah

With all the candelabras both hanging from the ceiling and balanced on the statuettes atop the table, you might get flashbacks to Beauty and the Beast in this simple yet tasteful dining room. The wood table has been polished so carefully that it’s like a glassy ocean reflecting the sky.

When Oprah had her home at Promised Land remodeled, it meant selling a great deal of her multitude of possessions. Among the items sold was a poster from her seminal 1985 Steven Spielberg-directed film The Color Purple, to the tune of $4,000. The collective proceeds from the sale, $600,000, went towards the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation College Fund.

16. Care for a cuppa?

Opening immediately to the vast grounds of Promised Land’s garden, Oprah’s tearoom originally served a different purpose. As it was built, this was at first intended to be the space for the garden staff to cut and arrange flowers. But Oprah decided it should be used as a place to relax with a cup of tea.

In the tea house, one is meant to be utterly devoid of distractions. You will not find a television there, nor any other digital device meant for amusement. It is a space to unburden oneself from electronic accessories, and to sit quietly, be present, and observe the garden. Still, there are more extraordinary parts of the grounds to explore.

17. Wisteria dreams

Outside the tearoom is the entryway into the sprawling grounds of the garden that occupies a majority of the space at Oprah’s mansion. Steps lead down from a framework dripping with sweet-smelling purple wisteria to a small copper fountain. The entire entrance is surrounded by roses, lilies, dahlias, daffodils, and more.

Oprah is understandably proud of the space that she has made her own, and the unique touches she gave to the mansion she purchased in 2001. She has said that when she is driving away from the home, she looks back at it and is reminded of the moment in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy realizes she never had to look any further than her own backyard.

18. A sneak peek

Ever wanted to have a gander at what Oprah Winfrey wears before she wears it? This is the sanctum sanctorum of Oprah’s mansion, her personal closet. The first thing you’ll notice is how excellently color-coded all of her clothes have been arranged in her oak cabinets. But this is just a glimpse of the entire closet.

Have you ever met anyone who has that many shoes? Not to mention, this walk-in closet is so enormous that there’s space to decorate it as though it were a public room of the house. There are vases filled with freshly-cut flowers, and even what appears to be a television hooked up to a surveillance camera. While Oprah’s own input drove the redesign of her lavish residence, she also had help in perfecting her desired decor.

19. Penny for your thoughts

Designers Andrew Walker and David Simmons, responsible for so much of the decoration inside Oprah’s mansion at Promised Land, were the masterminds behind this part of the guesthouse. The centerpiece of the room is, of course, the enormous penny on the wall. The rest of the colors also follow its cue.

Sombreuil roses weave their way through the arches, and smaller iceberg roses flank the statue itself. Surrounding everything are white hydrangea bushes, placed there intentionally as a touching tribute to Oprah’s grandmother, who raised her for a part of her childhood and had similar flowers outside her own home in Mississippi. This isn’t the only impressive installment on her sprawling grounds.

21. Four women

Born in Costa Rica, artist and sculptor Francisco Zúñiga made a career for himself in Mexico. This bronze statue piece, fashioned in 1974, caught Oprah’s eye and she placed it in the grounds of her mansion’s garden. It’s called ‘Grupo de cuatro mujeres de pie,’ a group of four standing women.

Rich with symbolism, these four women hold guard beneath a grove of eucalyptus, palm, and pine trees. Each woman represents a different stage of life in femininity: the teenage girl, the expectant mother, a middle-aged woman, and an elderly woman. The statue was purchased by auction at Christie’s for $3.1 million dollars.

22. Made in the shade

With their gnarled, wriggling branches jutting up far into the sky and filled with expression, these California live oak trees are representative of local vegetation and have been planted throughout the garden of Oprah’s mansion. There are twelve oak trees in total, and that number itself is not without significance.

Certainly, the idea of having twelve oaks conjures up images of Gone With The Wind, but Oprah sees them as meaning something different. She has christened these oak trees her Twelve Apostles. As referenced by her Instagram posts, these are some of her favorite features of her home, which make her feel the most at peace. But the tranquility doesn’t stop there.

23. True zen

Because of the vastness of her property and the constant stimuli from having so many things to look at and appreciate — whether natural or man-made — Oprah says that when she’s at Promised Land, she can sometimes go weeks without turning on the television. Particularly now that her show has ended. And seriously, who’d need a TV with a place this big to explore?

Oprah claims to have even gone an entire summer without using her television at all, just being present and enjoying the space. She remarked that sometimes when she’s sitting reading a book on her porch, she’ll drift off into silently dreaming while awake. And something in the surroundings must have caught her eye while she was dreaming…

24. Seamair Farm

When Oprah Winfrey moved into Promised Land, she made sure to get to know her next-door neighbors. They became rather close, and when her neighbor passed away in 2016, her family had hoped that Oprah might decide to take the property into her own hands. As it turns out, that’s exactly what happened.

Called Seamair Farm, the property had a unique layout different from Oprah’s mansion. It cost her a handsome $28.9 million and it became annexed to the grounds of Promised Land, expanding her wonderland even further. Seamair had not been on the market for some 40 years until then. Under new ownership, what changes would it face?

25. Fishing for wonders

During the course of his career, Cliff May – the architect of Seamair Farm – designed some 18,000 of his signature ranch houses and more than 1,000 custom residences. He is best known for forging the concept of the California Dream Home — and now Oprah was in possession of yet another such one.

The house of Seamair Farm, a mid-century modern beauty in its ranch style, has five bedrooms, four baths, and takes up 4,750 square feet. The entire property’s grounds cover an additional 23 acres, which include an orchard of fruit trees, an avocado grove, and a fish pond with Japanese koi. But because of its past as a farm, the property also contains something Oprah’s mansion hadn’t had previously.

26. Ranch life

Because it had previously been used as a horse track, this property now-owned by Oprah contains its own equestrian area. There is an expertly-trimmed riding course and stables for the horses. The whole area is so spacious that when you’re out for a trot on your favorite steed, you couldn’t see the neighbors if you tried.

Although the home itself is more compact than the mansion Oprah had originally purchased from the Veloz family in 2001, adding it just increases the options of places for her to allow the collective design imagination of her and her team to go wild once more. It also has two natural wells — which would come to be important soon enough. However, the design hasn’t been her only concern when it comes to these residences. She’s also had to deal with issues of a much more dire nature.

27. Abundance and drought

Oprah Winfrey is particularly proud of her vegetable garden and loves to talk about how much enjoyment she gets out of growing her own produce. But there is an overarching problem. The environmental conditions in California became quite dire in the past few years because of the statewide water shortage.

During the California droughts, it was a good thing she had bought Seamair because she could use the water from the wells there, in addition to shipping in her own. She had to cut her water usage in half. But once the drought ended, the area’s troubles were far from over.

28. A plague of mud

In January 2018, the town of Montecito was devastated by catastrophic mudslides. As Oprah remembers it, she woke up around 3:47 AM on the night of the disaster because her dogs were barking. She woke up her partner Stedman because the sky over the Santa Ynez Mountains appeared to be aflame.

The mud crept onto her property, but comparatively, she was fortunate. Her neighbors’ homes were utterly devastated by the damage the mudslide wreaked. Because the extent of the mudslide surrounded her house and stretched down to Highway 101, she couldn’t leave her home. So she called a local famous friend, another Montecito resident.

29. Montecito sisterhood

It was Ellen DeGeneres! Ellen is also a proud resident of Montecito, and gushed about her love for the town. Oprah called her friend live through FaceTime during Ellen’s show to talk to her viewers and to give them a personal tour of the damage that their area had suffered from the mudslides.

Oprah also wanted to use the opportunity to give center stage to the firefighters and search and rescue teams that had arrived on the scene from Ventura City. While Oprah’s mansion had only incurred minimal damage, the gas was shut off and her water mains were also closed. But once a way out was cleared, she had other places to head to.

30. She has multiple homes — including one in Telluride, Colorado

Oprah’s beautiful mountain lodging is in the coveted Mountain Village area of Telluride, Colorado. The home is a temporary residence of Oprah’s, probably one she stays in when she hits the slopes! The property, which rests on 60 acres, was purchased completely furnished, says Mountain Living. Oprah spent $11 million on it — just a drop in the bucket for the billionaire.

Within the house’s 8,706 floor plan, you’ll find five bedrooms, six and a half baths, a chef’s kitchen, fitness room, game room, indoor hot tub, a home theater, a guest house, a three-car garage, and more. Smart home tech is installed throughout, including high tech heating systems — you definitely need that during chilly mountain winters!

31. Oprah also has one in Hawaii

The TV talk show queen once considered tearing this small gray ranch house down. Fortunately, she didn’t and now it’s become a beautiful 21st-century farmhouse in Maui, Hawaii. Her personal trainer turned property manager Bob Greene inspired Oprah to purchase land in Hawaii, says Oprah.com. She called in a designer and architect to revamp the home.

Apparently, it ended up being a bigger project than originally thought! “Architectural designer Jeff Wooley, of John B. Murray Architect, rejiggered the quirky floor plan to create less-angular rooms and then, with the help of T.M.C. General Contracting Inc. and a team of craftsmen, stripped the house to its basic structure,” writes Oprah.com.

32. And an $8 million property in Washington

Oprah’s $8 million Washington property is a private luxury compound on Orcas Island. For those not in the Pacific Northwest, that’s located in the northwestern corner of Washington state. Sitting on over 40 acres of land, its three-story main house has four bedrooms, three baths and a powder room. It’s a fairly newish build, constructed in 2007.

If you love cooking, you’d love her kitchen. There’s skylights abound, a large center island and a built-in pizza oven! Upstairs, the family room has shuffleboard and pool tables — pizza and games? This is the perfect party house! Oprah can end her day watching the sunset along the 3,000 feet of west-facing shoreline.

33. She no longer owns Chicago real estate

Although formerly based in Chicago, Oprah Winfrey officially sold off her last bit of Chicago real estate in 2018, reported the Chicago Tribune. The last property she sold was a 2,250-square-foot Colonial-style home in Elmwood Park. She never lived in the home and it’s not certain what she used the home for.

Originally listing the selling price for — surprisingly — $400,000, the home’s price was reduced from $390,000 to $370,000, then sold it at $375,000. Other Chicago properties she owned were a duplex in Water Tower Place (sold for $4.625 million) and a co-op unit in the Gold Coast (sold for $2.75 million).

34. Oprah had homes in Florida and Indiana

The TV screen queen used to have a condo on Fisher Island, in Florida — a place described by the Sun-Sentinel as such: “Peacocks roam free here. So do millionaires, movie stars and moguls.” She listed it in 2008 for a whopping $2,090,000, reported Variety. She sold her Indiana farm in 2003, originally listing it for $8.5 million, says Forbes.

It listed with the real estate agent Jane Field of Koenig & Strey. The farm was 164 acres with a main residence of 9,700-square-feet. There was a swimming pool and an orchard — how many people do you know with their own private orchard?! Oprah originally bought the farm in 1988 and hung onto it until 2004.

35. Where the heart is

Over the past few decades, Oprah Winfrey has used her revenue to purchase a variety of houses. In addition to Oprah’s mansion at Promised Land in California, she’s had an apartment in Chicago (listed at $7.75 million), a home in New Jersey (valued at $68 million), a tropical vacation home both on the Hawaiian island of Maui and the Caribbean island of Antigua. She also has an $8.2 million wood cabin in the temperate rain forest of Orcas Island in Washington state.

But when looking at all the homes she has procured, it’s essential not to overlook just how charitable Oprah has been with her money. She is listed as the most charitable celebrity, beating out her competition by far. Her organization, the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, has given away funds in the area of $40 million.

Sources: MonaGiza, Nimvo