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

From Maui to Sicily, see the actual locations where Mike White's deliciously addictive series was filmed. Then take a look at HGTV's fantasy room designs for our favorite season 1 and season 2 characters.

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January 06, 2023

By: Felicia Feaster

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Photo By: HBO

Photo By: Kyle Rothenborg/Four Seasons

Photo By: Four Seasons Resort Maui

Photo By: Four Seasons Maui

Photo By: HBO

Photo By: Travis Neely

Photo By: HBO

Photo By: Summer Thornton Design Inc

Photo By: HBO

Photo By: Hilton & Hyland, a member of Luxury Portfolio International

Photo By: HBO

Photo By: Brian Patrick Flynn

Photo By: San Domenico Palace Taormina

Photo By: San Domenico Palace

Photo By: San Domenico Palace a Four Seasons Hotel

Photo By: HBO

Photo By: David Christensen

Photo By: HBO

Photo By: Belles Demeures de France, a member of Luxury Portfolio International

Photo By: HBO

Photo By: Jacob Elliott

Photo By: San Domenico Palace Four Seasons Resort

Photo By: HBO

Photo By: Jeff Herr

Photo By: HBO

Photo By: Shayla Owodunni

Photo By: HBO

Photo By: UGA

The White Lotus Hotel Staff

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 Four Seasons Maui Resort at Wailea

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.

Poolside Drama

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

The Poolside Bar at Four Seasons Maui

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.

Judgy Teenagers

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.

A Work Desk Fit for a Queen Bee

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.

A Privileged Preppy

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.

A Preppy Perch Designed With Help From Mother

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.

From: Alisha Gwen

Balancing Work and Motherhood

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.

Sleek, Chic and Expensive

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.

An Existentially Stressed-Out Boy-Man

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

A Luxe Man Cave for a Guy in Need of Hibernation

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.

From: Hilton & Hyland

Managing Expectations Among the Privileged Class

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.

Good Intentions, But No Time

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.

San Domenico Palace, Taormina, Sicily

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.

San Domenico Palace Bar

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.

Luxurious Settings for Bad Behavior

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.

Living La Dolce Vita

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.

A Little Girl Inside a Grown Woman's Body

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.

Hotel Management Is Complicated

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.

A Pretty Bachelorette Pad

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.

A Grand Italian Palazzo

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?

The Globetrotting Scammer's Real Estate Portfolio

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.

A Tech Bro Abroad

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.

A Tainted Paradise

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.

An Entrance Fitting a Tech Magnate

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.

Learn More: Tour a Luxurious, Eco-Friendly San Francisco Home

A Beckoning Isola Bella

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.

A Seasoned Philanderer

Wealthy fun-seeker Cameron Sullivan (Theo James) is a badly behaved husband married to a long suffering wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy) who may be getting her revenge on the side.

Daphne's Lair Back Home

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.

From: James Farmer

An American Girl in Italy

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.

An On-Trend Home

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.

Nice Guys Sometimes Finish Last

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."

A Nose-to-the-Grindstone Student's Space

We think Albie is probably busier studying at Stanford than bothering with dorm decor. We see his back-home campus space as functional and generally cluttered.

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

Shop This Look

The White Lotus Hotel Staff

The Four Seasons Maui Resort at Wailea

Poolside Drama

The Poolside Bar at Four Seasons Maui

Judgy Teenagers

A Work Desk Fit for a Queen Bee

A Privileged Preppy

A Preppy Perch Designed With Help From Mother

Balancing Work and Motherhood

Sleek, Chic and Expensive

An Existentially Stressed-Out Boy-Man

A Luxe Man Cave for a Guy in Need of Hibernation

Managing Expectations Among the Privileged Class

Good Intentions, But No Time

San Domenico Palace, Taormina, Sicily

San Domenico Palace Bar

Luxurious Settings for Bad Behavior

Living La Dolce Vita

A Little Girl Inside a Grown Woman's Body

Hotel Management Is Complicated

A Pretty Bachelorette Pad

A Grand Italian Palazzo

The Globetrotting Scammer's Real Estate Portfolio

A Tech Bro Abroad

A Tainted Paradise

An Entrance Fitting a Tech Magnate

A Beckoning Isola Bella

A Seasoned Philanderer

Daphne's Lair Back Home

An American Girl in Italy

An On-Trend Home

Nice Guys Sometimes Finish Last

A Nose-to-the-Grindstone Student's Space

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