9 Facts About Bill Gates’ House You Probably Didn’t Know About It

Bill Gates’ house, often nicknamed Xanadu 2.0, is a timber-and-glass compound built into a wooded slope on the shore of Lake Washington in Medina, near Seattle. It was designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson with James Cutler’s practice, took about seven years to build in the 1990s, and is usually reported at around 66,000 square feet (6,100 m²). This article is for readers curious about the architecture behind the headlines. It sets out each price as a reported cost, assessed value or estimate with its date and source, and checks nine much-repeated facts about the Bill Gates house against published sources. It gives no address or private family details.

What does the Bill Gates house actually look like?

From the lake, the Bill Gates house reads as a series of low, wood-clad pavilions stepping down the hillside among mature trees, rather than one large block. The Pacific Coast Architecture Database names Peter Bohlin (Bohlin Cywinski Jackson) and James Cutler as the collaborating designers. Wikipedia’s article on the house describes it as a modern “Pacific lodge” design and lists it as an earth-sheltered home, partly set into the slope.

In his 1995 book The Road Ahead, excerpted by The Seattle Times, Gates wrote that Douglas fir forms the exposed beams and vertical supports and carries the glass roof over the main staircase. He said he wanted craftsmanship without anything ostentatious. A 1999 report by Architosh found that the house was drawn mostly by hand, and that the architects’ own publications listed the project anonymously as a guest house and garage in Medina.

How much did the Bill Gates house cost, and what is it worth?

No official construction cost for the Bill Gates house has been published. The figures below are the ones most often quoted, each labelled by type. Note that even the size varies by source: 66,000 square feet is the figure used by Forbes and most press, while the PCAD record gives 48,000 square feet of total floor area and a 1997 New Republic report quoted a tour guide’s 40,000.

For comparison with other high-value homes, see our list of the most expensive houses in the world.

Xanadu 2.0: nine facts about the Bill Gates house, checked

The facts below are the ones most often repeated online. Each has been checked against Gates’ own 1995 description, contemporary reports or later press; where a widely shared figure could not be traced to a source, it has been removed or labelled as reported.

1) Bedrooms and bathrooms

Press reports, most recently Hello! magazine in August 2026, give seven bedrooms and 24 bathrooms, ten of them with bathtubs. These counts come from press coverage, not from the architects or public plans. Gates himself wrote in 1995 that the family’s everyday living space would be about average for a large house, with the size taken up by spaces for guests and events.

2) Kitchens

The same reports give six kitchens, which suits a house used for large receptions as well as family life. Gates wrote in The Road Ahead that the kitchen appliances were no more advanced than those in other well-equipped kitchens: the technology went into communications and controls, not into cooking.

3) Reception hall

Gates described a reception hall that could seat about 100 people for dinner, with 24 video monitors, each with a 40-inch picture tube, recessed into the east wall and hidden behind wood panels when switched off. Later press accounts describe a single 22-foot (6.7 m) screen, a limestone fireplace and capacity for 150 seated or 200 standing; these may reflect later changes and have not been confirmed by a primary source.

4) Swimming pool

The house has a 60-foot (18 m) pool with an underwater sound system, reported by The New Republic in 1997 (“underwater speakers”) and by Forbes in 2009. The same 1997 report mentions a trampoline room with 20-foot (6 m) ceilings. Claims about the size of the pool building and a glass wall swimmers can pass under appear only in uncited articles and are not repeated here.

5) Garages

The architects’ publications list a garage among the buildings at Medina, and Architosh reported that Bohlin Cywinski Jackson modelled the garage in the 3D program ModelShop. Car capacities quoted online vary widely (from 10 to 23 cars) and come from uncited sources, so they are not given here.

6) Lighting and the electronic pin

The most famous feature is the one Gates described himself. Visitors receive an electronic pin that tells the house who and where they are. Lights and music follow occupants from room to room, a phone call rings only the handset nearest the person it is for, and the house learns preferences such as lighting levels, he wrote in the 1995 excerpt. In 1995 this was a prototype of what is now called a smart home; today similar presence-based controls are available in consumer systems.

For ways to use lighting at a more ordinary scale, see our mood lighting tips and our guide to how interior lighting design transforms spaces.

7) Stream and estuary

Gates wrote that a small estuary on the site, fed by groundwater from the hill behind the house, would be stocked with sea-run cutthroat trout, and that he hoped river otters would visit. The 1997 New Republic report confirms a private estuary stocked with cutthroat trout. The earlier claim that the stream was built to manage stormwater from the roof could not be traced to a source and has been removed.

8) Art on screens and the library

Rather than a fixed collection on the walls, Gates planned screens throughout the house that could display images from a database of more than a million still images assembled by his company Corbis. The dollar figures often quoted for these screens and their servers ($80,000 and $150,000) have no traceable source and have been removed.

The domed library, with a central oculus, is reported to cover about 2,100 square feet (195 m²) and to include secret spaces such as hidden bookcases. Gates owns Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester, which he bought at Christie’s in New York in November 1994 for US$30.8 million, according to The Seattle Times. The figure of “$8 million” in earlier versions of this article was wrong. The codex has also been lent to museums, including the Uffizi in Florence, so it is not permanently on show in the house.

9) Building into the hillside

The most interesting architectural decision in the Bill Gates house is the siting. By setting the buildings into the slope and breaking them into several wings, the architects kept the visible bulk down from the lake, and the earth against the back walls helps steady indoor temperatures. How much energy this saves has never been published, so this article does not claim a figure. The earlier statement that the house used “half a million wood logs” has no source and has been removed; Gates describes Douglas fir as the main structural timber.

What the Bill Gates house teaches

The Bill Gates house is less a model to copy than a well-documented early experiment: a 1990s attempt to hide technology behind timber and glass, and to fit a very large programme onto a hillside without one dominant mass. For the opposite approach to comfort, look at why tiny houses are this generation’s big dream and how small houses can feel bigger on the inside.

Corrections log

• Codex Leicester price corrected from “about $8 million” to US$30.8 million (1994).
• “Over $145 million” resale estimate (undated, unsourced) replaced with dated assessed and estimated values.
• Removed unsourced claims: half a million wood logs, Caribbean sand, $80,000 screens and $150,000 servers, 3,900 sq ft pool building, 10-car underground garage with fractured concrete, stormwater purpose of the stream, “dramatically reduced HVAC loads”.
• Reception hall capacity and screens now based on Gates’ own 1995 description, with later reports noted.
• Question-and-answer section removed; its accurate answers are folded into the text above.

Sources and further reading

The main primary source on the Bill Gates house is Gates’ own description in The Road Ahead (1995), excerpted by The Seattle Times. Design credits come from the Pacific Coast Architecture Database at the University of Washington; values and room counts come from the press reports linked above, with their dates.