If you grew up watching “The Brady Bunch” reruns like I did, then this house is probably as familiar as your own.
Who could forget those double entry doors that led to the sunken living room? The mod orange kitchen with the brick wall? The Jack and Jill bathroom? The sliding patio doors that opened to the AstroTurf backyard? And the dramatic open staircase in the center of it all?
Series creator Sherwood Schwartz chose this house because he thought it looked like one an architect would design.
The house where the exterior shots were taken for the sitcom back in the late 1960s went on the market in July, so I thought this was the perfect time to revisit an American classic.
Read on to see how the Brady Bunch house looked on TV in the 1960s and ’70s, the total makeover the sets were given for a TV movie in the 1980s, and find out what’s going on with it today!
Note: This post contains affiliate links that may earn me a commission without affecting the price.
“The Brady Bunch” House
They say this is the most-photographed private home in the country (I would’ve guessed this one was).
In July it went on the market for the first time in nearly 50 years for $1.885 million.
According to the listing, the house was built in 1959 and has 2,477 square feet.
The address they used for the show was 4222 Clinton Way, but they never specified the city.
The real house where the exterior shots were taken at 11222 Dilling Street in North Hollywood, California (Studio City).
The Douglas Elliman Real Estate listing for the real Brady house says:
This iconic residence is reportedly the 2nd most photographed home in the United States after the White House. Featuring perfectly preserved 1970s decor, it boasts one of the largest lots in the neighborhood — over 12,500 sqft.
Enormous, lush backyard gardens & lawn, completely private & serene. Located on a quiet residential block, property also borders the Los Angeles River, which is a unique street-to-river orientation.
Two Master Suites, one up/one down plus generous entertaining spaces that flow uniformly from one to the next and to the outdoors. Gated motor court plus large separate garage provide parking convenience. Whether inspired by the TV family or the real life surrounding neighborhood, this residence is a perfect postcard of American ’70s style and its special culture.
The exterior and interior sets don’t match. Unlike the two-story Brady Bunch set, the real house is a split level.
Marina at Mockingbird Lane wrote a post calling it a “House of Lies:“
She figured out the floorplan and what the exterior really would have looked like, and it’s pretty wild.
Like the real house, the Brady Bunch set had double doors that opened into a sunken living room:
The entry usually had a stone wall:
But in the 5th season, it mysteriously disappeared:
The real house doesn’t have a full second story or a staircase like the they did on the show.
It was perfect for those classic Brady Family photo ops:
The Brady Bunch set was sometimes used for other shows during that era, including “Mission: Impossible:”
Robert Reed had a recurring role on “Mannix” and sometimes filmed scenes in the Brady house for it.
Here’s Jessica Walter (aka Lucille Bluth!) from a “Mannix” episode on the Brady set:
The Brady living room didn’t have a lot of seating, but they made it work:
The show’s theme song was sung by professional singers in the first season. The “Brady kids” began performing it in Season Two, and the lyrics were changed accordingly. It was re-arranged and re-recorded by the cast each year.
“The Brady Bunch” never cracked the Top 30 in the ratings during its 5-year run.
Sherwood Schwartz believed the show has had staying power because they wrote the episodes from the viewpoints of the children. They focused on stories young viewers would relate to, and they showed that a blended family could be a happy and harmonious one.
He said he got a lot of letters from kids over the years asking if they could live with the Bradys.
The Brady Bunch kitchen was an ode to the ’70s with orange laminate countertops and avocado green appliances:
In this shot you can see that even the baseboards were green:
They had a matching green and orange table and chairs in the eat-in kitchen:
Robert Reed became one of TV’s most beloved dads, but he hated the role.
He fought with the producers so bitterly and so often that he was actually cut out of the final episode of the series.
In the finale, Greg graduates from high school, but Mike is “out of town.”
If it had been picked up for a sixth season, he would have been replaced.
Mike Brady was an architect who designed the house for his family.
The six kids shared two bedrooms and a bath:
The girls’ bedroom was pink until the 5th season, when it was yellow:
The three boys shared a room with gray paneling and clown paintings:
They had bunk beds and a bit of a nautical theme with the wallpaper:
Greg wanted to move to the attic in Season 2, but Mike said the ceilings were only 3′ high.
A couple seasons later, the ceilings had magically grown:
So Greg got his own teen hang-out space after all:
You can watch “The Brady Bunch” on Hulu, which is how I got most of these screenshots.
Unfortunately, they were unable to secure the rights to some of the episodes, including “Our Son, the Man,” in which Greg moved into the attic.
Alice had a room off the kitchen. But first she had to walk through the “service porch,” as they called it:
She had a great view of the laundry and mops from her bedroom:
She apparently didn’t have a bathroom of her own.
Does that mean she was sharing with the kids upstairs?
They weren’t allowed to show toilets on TV at that time,
so you’ll never see one in the kids’ Jack and Jill bathroom.
They also never showed a Master Bathroom for Mike and Carol, but I always imagined it was behind that screen:
The real house has two master suites.
On the TV show, Mike had a den with a fireplace that was open to the living room on the other side:
The green shutters above the fireplace could be closed for privacy:
The Brady house had a Family Room/Rec Room with classic 1970s paneling:
There were upholstered daybeds for the kids to hang out on instead of sofas:
The back of the Brady Bunch house had three sets of sliding doors leading to the patio:
There wasn’t any glass in the doors, though, to prevent reflections and glare from the TV lights:
Recreating the House for “The Brady Bunch Movie”
Because of the fence built around the house, it didn’t appear in the 1995 spoof “The Brady Bunch Movie.”
Producers found a similar house in Sherman Oaks and built a fake front for it:
The movie imagined what it would be like if the sweet, wholesome Brady family lived in the 1990s:
Their attention to detail in recreating the Brady house for the movie was impressive:
The Brady Bunch House Redecorated for the ’80s
The Brady Bunch house got a totally new look for the 1980s in the TV movie A Very Brady Christmas.
In the movie, the woodwork, walls, and furniture were pale and pastel.
The paneled Family Room was turned into an Exercise Room:
And check out the updated, thoroughly ’80s kitchen:
In the movie, which is streaming on Hulu, the kids are grown and gone, and some of them have families of their own.
Carol (Florence Henderson) is working as a real estate agent. And Alice (Ann B. Davis) returns to the Brady household after Sam leaves her for a younger woman, a story line that’s oddly played for laughs.
The ratings were so good that a short-lived drama called “The Bradys” followed in 1990.
In the pilot episode of the TV series in 1969, this was the exterior they used:
Once “The Brady Bunch” was picked up for an entire season, the establishing shots of the new house were taken.
They were then recycled throughout the series, which is why the yard always looked the same. Each time the front of the Brady house is shown “at night,” it was just a darkened photo from daytime.
Similarities between “The Brady Bunch” and Yours, Mine and Ours
Yours, Mine and Ours came out in 1968 and featured Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda as widowers
who marry and blend their large families.
I wrote about the Victorian house from the movie if you want to see how it looks today:
The producers of Yours, Mine and Ours threatened to sue Sherwood Schwartz for stealing their concept with “The Brady Bunch,” but he’d been trying to sell the idea for the show for years and had the notes to prove it.
*UPDATE: HGTV bought the Brady Bunch house!*
Per MSN:
David Zaslav, the CEO of HGTV parent company Discovery, announced on Tuesday’s second-quarter earnings call that the network had purchased the house that was recently on the market.
“One of our projects for HGTV will speak to those ‘Brady Bunch’ fans on the call,” he said. “You may have heard that the house from the iconic series was recently on the market in California. I’m excited to share that HGTV is the winning bidder and will restore the ‘Brady Bunch’ home to its 1970s glory as only HGTV can.”
HGTV finished its remodel, and the transformation was incredible, as you can see above.
This house didn’t even have a second story before, so they built one!
I watched endless hours of “Brady Bunch” episodes, specials, and movies to take these screenshots of the sets. I also found some popping up a lot around the internet without attribution and enlarged/edited them to make them easier to see, so thanks to whoever originally took them.
It’s hard to believe “The Brady Bunch” only ran for 5 years, from 1969-1974, since so many of us feel like we grew up with Greg, Marcia, Peter, Jan, Greg, and Thindy. 🙂
Take the video tour of the remodeled Brady house and see the photos on HGTV.com.
See photos of how the house looked before its makeover in the 2018 listing.
Visit The Brady Bunch Blog for more original screenshots and great set shots.
