The Blessings of Home

By Jaclyn Smith, Los Angeles, California

As appeared in

Someone once asked me what my favorite place in the world was. I had to say that with all the traveling I’ve done, with all the incredible spots I’ve seen, the place I treasure most is home. Home. The word itself comforts me.

Home is where my loved ones are, where I can kick back and be my­self, where the kitchen is full of good smells, where the living room has my favorite books, where my dogs are welcome in every room and where at night I can fall asleep in my own bed on my own pillow, my head full of prayers.

Home is a sanctuary, and it’s been my passion to create a place of rest and regeneration for my family and help others do the same. Many of you probably remember me as one of the original angels in the popular seventies TV show Charlie’s Angels, but in addition to being an actress, I design a home and fashion line for Kmart, so I’m continually asking myself what makes a house into that incredible place we call home. Style, taste, colors—they’re all important, but I think there’s something even bigger than that.

I made my first foray in home decorating as a young girl growing up in Texas. Actually it started when my family visited Mount Vernon, Washington’s beloved home. There it stood on the green banks of the Potomac, with its long porch and white pillars. We walked through the whole house and I was struck by the loving detail our founding couple put into their home.

Then we got to the bedroom. I stopped in my tracks and gasped at practically the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen: a four-poster canopy bed. “I want a bed just like that,” I whispered to Mom and, God bless her, she was totally on board with that dream.

“All right, honey, we’ll see what we can do.”

Back in Houston, we picked out a pink fabric with blue morning glories for curtains and a lace canopy for my new bed. Filled with my Madame Alexander dolls, it looked just wonderful. The transformation fired up my imagination. Soon I had more ideas. I found a painting for the walls and then decided the walls themselves needed a new color. At one point I had to have one of those skirted dressing tables like you see in 1940s movies. Later I went for an antebellum theme inspired by the movie Gone With the Wind.

I’m sure some of my ideas must have seemed crazy to my mother, but she was willing to let me experiment. She took me to look for antiques at thrift stores and let me pick out fabrics. She let me try different things, even when I wanted to make the room stark and modern. She nurtured my creative spirit.

After a year at Trinity University I moved to New York City. There I decorated my first apartment, a tiny studio with wonderful high ceilings. I had come to the city to dance and act and, as you can imagine, I had an extremely limited budget.