Love 'The White Lotus'? Then You'll Want to See HGTV's Design Peek Into the Hit HBO Series

If you are a fan of Mike White's (Enlightened, School of Rock) HBO hit The White Lotus about the complicated relationships between staff and their privileged, often entitled guests at the idyllic White Lotus resorts, then you know the look of the show is a big part of its appeal. The show's creators have done a splendid job of using real hotel locations in Hawaii and Sicily to stand in for the luxe, fictional White Lotus hotel chain. HGTV goes to some of those real-life locations and matches our favorite White Lotus characters with the rooms we imagine they would occupy back home.

The White Lotus director Mike White took advantage of a lull in hotel stays during COVID-19 and used the luxurious Four Seasons Maui hotel in Hawaii to shoot the first season of his upstairs-downstairs HBO series. The show's production design team transformed some of the rooms, giving them a more exotic, colorful look than the more sedate, tasteful designs favored by the Four Seasons.

The White Lotus viewers will recognize this gorgeous poolscape at the Four Seasons Resort Maui as a key location for many scenes.

This swim-up bar is featured in a scene between insecure dad Mark Mossbacher (Steve Zahn) and his angsty teenage son Quinn (Fred Hechinger) in The White Lotus.

Nothing is more terrifying than a critical teenager, except maybe a judgy teenager poolside. In the first season of The White Lotus, Sydney Sweeney and Brittany O' Grady star as a privileged Gen Z (Sydney) and her frenemy (Brittany) she's decided to tote along on vacay.

Click to the next slide to see the bedroom we think Sydney's spoiled, eviscerating character Olivia would be most likely to come home to.

We don't think Olivia's space would be sweet or pastel or the kind of bedroom she'd hole up and ruminate in. This queenly purple perch feels just like the kind of place Olivia — with her off-the-charts confidence and oodles of snark — would use to cyberbully from.

Shane Patton (Jake Lacy) in the first season of The White Lotus is a wealthy, demanding newlywed and Cornell grad who wants his new wife Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) to give up her career as a journalist and follow in his socialite mother's footsteps. For that very reason, see what we think would be the most apropos living room for his character back on the mainland.

We think Shane would have his mother Kitty Patton's (Molly Shannon) interior designer, not his wife, trick out his space in preppy shades of pink and green.

Connie Britton is mama bear Nicole Massbacher, principal breadwinner as CEO of a tech company, who tries to get some work done in paradise in season one of The White Lotus. The Mossbacher family stays in the real Four Seasons presidential suite, which Mike White makes feel claustraphobic and tension-filled with the four members of the family and their guest sharing the same luxurious space.

We imagine that back home, the relentlessly rearranging Nicole would create an uncluttered family home suited to her own tastes where she could both entertain work clients and keep her family's tendency toward chaos in check. Of course, Nicole, harried executive that she is, probably wouldn't be cleaning the family's home herself: Once she took care of the feng shui, she would undoubtedly farm out the daily maintenance to her overburdened housekeeper.

With a busy wife and complicated children, Mark Mossbacher (Steve Zahn) probably keeps his distance back home, letting wife Nicole handle the domestic front.

We're guessing a tricked out man cave is this man-boy's preferred hiding place from all the family drama. This fancy he-space is the perfect place for Mark to hide out from his wife and kids while still maintaining Nicole's desire for beautiful design.

Armond (Murray Bartlett) has his hands full balancing upper middle-class expectations and entitlement as the manager at Maui's White Lotus resort, where every guest interaction is a potential minefield that sends the tightly wound Armond spiraling.

At one point when Armond moved into his Maui apartment, he probably imagined he'd get around to decorating. But with the unrelenting demands of his needy guests and his own struggle to maintain an even keel, buying even a few throw pillows for his bachelor pad has proven to be a struggle.

The San Domenico Palace, Taormino, A Four Seasons Hotel is a former monastery founded in 1384 and transformed into a luxury Four Seasons property that has hosted celebrities including Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren. It's also the gorgeous setting for the second season of The White Lotus, which unfolds at the beach, on the outdoor patios and in the plush bedrooms of this gorgeous Italian resort.

From pretty young escorts to hotel managers on-the-make, The White Lotus lobby bar is one of the show's drama-filled settings. Viewers anxious to play out their own dramas IRL can stay at the San Domenico Palace or just grab a Taormina Royal cocktail at the Bar and Chiostro.

The San Domenico Palace, Taormina provided the luxe exteriors and interiors for the second season of The White Lotus. Obsessed with the show? You can book a room at the real White Lotus here for about $1,600-$6,000 a night, depending on the season and room size.

A lady with a taste for excess, Tanya McQuoid (Jennifer Coolidge) is the only character who bridges seasons 1 and 2 of The White Lotus. We personally can't get enough of her blend of child-like naivete and entitled cluelessness as she acts out her fantasies of Italian movie star glamor, imagining she's film star Monica Vitti riding a Vespa along the Italian coast.

Despite a bevy of romantic disappointments including a husband who may not be the Prince Charming she hoped for, Tanya remains girlish, spoiled, ready to believe in miracles but also prone to soul-crushing disappointment. We think she would rock a frilly canopied bed and ultra-feminine bedroom like this one back home where she can live out her princess fantasies, even if real life is a different story.

The second season of The White Lotus gave us another tortured hotel manager, Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore), who tries to tend to pampered guests and gets into some sticky situations in her own romantic life.

Without much time for a personal — or dating — life, we think that Valentina would instead channel her energy and creativity into creating a beautiful, stylish apartment for herself like this one, far from luxurious but with great attention to detail.

Quentin (Tom Hollander) lives in a gorgeous Italian villa that is in fact Villa Elena, once a 17th century monastery currently owned by designer Jacques Garcia. "You must have dumped a fortune into this place!" says Quentin's American guest Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge). But what, exactly, is lurking behind those heavy wood doors and gorgeous tapestries?

Is Quentin a grifter after Tanya's money or the real McCoy whose Italian palazzo is legit? By the conclusion of season two of The White Lotus we weren't quite sure, but we are guessing either way that Quentin maintains properties around the world, like this Paris beauty with a view of the Eiffel Tower, on either his or someone else's dime.

Ethan Spiller (Will Sharpe) is a relatively innocent Ivy League grad who has built a fortune but lacks some of the world-weariness needed to survive the machinations of his wealthy friends Cameron (Theo James) and his wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy), vacationing with Ethan and his wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza) at Sicily's White Lotus resort.

Though a vacation at a gorgeous 5-star Italian resort sounds like a slice of paradise to the rest of us, for Harper (Aubrey Plaza) it's a confrontation with the fissures in her marriage to her sweet, distracted husband Ethan.

Tucked into a hillside, this garage entrance to a sustainable California mansion looks like just the kind of discrete but very expensive space that Ethan and Harper would want.

The island connected to The White Lotus resort in Sicily is the site of one of the most mysterious scenes in this deliciously complicated HBO series, where Ethan and Daphne have some sort of rendezvous, one of the many narrative tendrils creator and writer Mike White leaves dangling in his class division drama.

We think a woman like Daphne, who has very little control over her philandering husband's behavior, would exert all her control on the domestic front. We see her living in this sort of cozy, calm space she's created for herself and her children on her many furniture shopping trips that would appeal to her desire for domestic comfort.

Indecisive 27-year-old Gen Z Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) is torn between romance with sweet Albie DiGrasso (Adam DiMarco) and sexier, more dangerous Jack (Leo Woodall) and trying to figure out how to maintain her sanity while under the thumb of her mercurial boss Tanya.

Portia probably doesn't have a lot of space as a big-city apartment dweller, but we are guessing from her Gen Z fashion choices that she is true to her generation's big trends: neon colors, plenty of plants and a general Jungalow vibe.

Actor Adam DiMarco plays Stanford student and hapless nice guy Albie in The White Lotus. DiMarco told Conde Nast Traveler of the two months he and the cast and crew spent filming at the San Domenico, "it was the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at. When I got there and I saw my view, I cried."