Ashley Tisdale Told Husband ‘You Need to Get 400 Books’ to Fill Home’s Bare Shelves Before Photo Shoot

Ashley Tisdale is opening the doors to her Los Angeles home that she decorated every inch of herself!

The High School Musical alum, 36, gave archdigest.com a peek inside the modern property she shares with her husband Christoper French and their daughter, Jupiter, 1.

But while the space looks perfect and polished now, a few days before the photo shoot, she admits, at least one area wasn’t quite camera ready.

“These bookshelves, I have to be honest, actually did not have books in them a couple days ago,” she shares in a video tour of the main living space and its now-fully-stocked built-ins. “I had my husband go to the bookstore and I was like, ‘You need to get 400 books.'”

“Obviously my husband was like, ‘We should be collecting books over time and putting them in the shelves.’ And I was like, ‘No, no, no, no,'” she recalls with a laugh.

The rest of the space, which the couple moved into when Ashley was seven months pregnant, was decorated with far more careful planning — and some inspiration from baby Jupiter.

“I was never into color as much. I was always into neutrals. And there’s something about being pregnant and seeing little spots where I could add color to it that made me feel like, ‘Oh, this gonna be a fun home,'” she explains in a video tour.

“I wanted to kind of do neutral chic but also quirky and fun,” she adds

The actress and singer is also a burgeoning design pro. She launched her own company, Frenshe Interiors, in 2021 after working with top decorators on her past homes.

“What I realized while working with designers is that I’ll have a vision, and they have a vision,” she explained. “But they’re so good at what they do. It’s beautiful. You’re like, ‘Well, I love it.'” This time, she only had to trust her own vision. And she couldn’t be happier with the outcome.

“I fully love this house,” she tells the outlet. “I love every piece of everything I’ve done here, and I’m really proud of myself.”

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The process did not come without challenges due to the COVID pandemic, which kept her search for inspiration online only.

“I pretty much designed this whole house through Instagram,” she says. “We weren’t really going to stores and stuff, and we weren’t going out. I was pregnant, so I was being super safe.”

She notes that she really wanted to incorporate “real designer furniture and vintage pieces” for the home. But one piece that caught her eye caused some flip-flopping.

Tisdale said becoming a parent made her reconsider purchasing her standout angular stone coffee table from Apparatus.

“I was definitely hesitant because knowing I was having a baby. I was like, ‘Okay this is probably not the greatest coffee table for this because it has sharp edges.’ But, I was like, ‘You know what? This room is gonna kind of be the no baby zone,” she shares, before admitting, “[Jupiter] definitely comes in here but we just really watch her.”

Read the full feature and see more photos on archdigest.com.