How Much Would it Cost to Repair Barbie’s Dreamhouse?

Barbie’s Dreamhouse is a super hot toy this holiday season due to the success of the Barbie movie. With all the hype around this hot pink playhouse, you might wonder how it would look like and function in real life. How do you even maintain it? If Barbie were real, how much would it cost her to repair her Dreamhouse?

Barbie has been an astronaut, a teacher, an architect, and even a construction worker! Between her career and her adventures, she likely doesn’t have enough time to maintain her beautiful Dreamhouse, even though she could do it herself.

That’s where we come in.

We researched how much it would cost for lawn care (because this is LawnStarter, after all), windows, a vinyl pool liner, repairs to her Dreamhouse’s flat roof, a garage for her convertible, fresh coats of fluorescent pink inside and out (and on a new picket fence), and much more. 

What Does Barbie’s Dreamhouse Look Like?

Barbie has had many Dreamhouses through the years, ranging from modest ranch houses to McMansions with an eclectic mix of aesthetics. However, the dreamhouse we’ll be looking at today is the unapologetically pink three-story Dreamhouse from the Barbie (2023) movie.

Located in the Palm Springs-esque Barbieland, the Barbie movie Dreamhouse mixes mid-century modern architecture with fun (if impractical!) features, like a three-story pool slide. This version of the Dreamhouse is also very open — quite literally, as there are no proper rooms to speak of.

The Dreamhouse has a living area, a dining area, a bar, a kitchen, a fireplace, and an outdoor area with a kidney-shaped pool on the first floor.  The second floor houses Barbie’s walk-in closet and a bathroom, complete with a bubble bath. Up top on the third floor is her bedroom, which features a sequined heart-shaped bed.

The Cost of Repairing Barbie’s Dreamhouse

For the purposes of this little thought exercise, we’ll assume that the three-story Dreamhouse from the Barbie movie is around 1,230 square feet with a 1,230-square-foot yard based on her driveway.

Barbie’s Dreamhouse is also lacking a few features that a flesh and blood Barbie might need to feel comfortable, like a full set of walls for every room. We’ll also calculate the cost of these additions to see how much she would need to pay to renovate her home for a human occupant (after all, the Barbie movie is all about our girl learning to cope with the real world). Let’s look at the table below to find out the estimated cost of renovating Barbie’s Dreamhouse.

Service	Cost
Lawn Care	$2,648 – $10,235 (mowing, other services, and maybe artificial grass installation)
Wall Construction	$5,313.81 – $14,583.81
Window Installation	$290 – $1,950 per piece
Door Replacement	$1,685 – $8,615
Garage Construction	$12,720 – $20,140
Exterior and Interior Painting	$12,130 – $20,840
Flat Roof Repairs	$300 – $1,175
Flat Roof Replacement	$13,500 – $20,250
Solar Panel Installation and Maintenance	$20,570
Gutters	$1,977 – $4,597
Pool and Accessories	$6,883 – $25,200+
Mosquito Control	$350 – $550
Fencing	$18 – $33 per linear foot, $1,850 for fence painting

The Picture-Perfect Lawn

Barbie’s Dreamhouse has a modest lawn dotted with what look to be daffodils up front and lined with birds of paradise plants and a hedge out back. There are also some towering palm trees and what looks like smaller, more manageable banana trees close to her property. Let’s break down how much the lawn care needed to maintain this picture-perfect 1,230-square-foot yard-square-foot yard would cost.

• Mowing: $30
• Aeration: $75
• Dethatching: $190 per hour, or about $250
• Weed control: $65 per hour, or about $35
• New sprinkler system: $1,000
• Lawn establishment (if she wants to remake her lawn because of too many weeds or to use a different grass type)
  • Traditional seeding: $160
  • Hydroseeding: $100 to $200
  • Sod: $725 to $1,460
• Mulching: $20 to $45
• Hedge trimming: $63 per hour
• Leaf removal: $65
• Tree trimming (if she’s responsible for trimming the trees near her home): $200
• Yard cleanup: $100

If you’re curious about how much it might have cost Barbie to plant birds of paradise, it could have been anywhere from $650 to $3,000. Curiously, it doesn’t look like she has any edging for her flower beds.

Let’s get the elephant out of the room: Wouldn’t Barbie have fake grass on her lawn since she lives in a plastic world? Assuming she has artificial turf, it would have cost her around $10,235 to get it installed. A bit pricey to be sure, but she’d never have to worry about mowing her lawn or lawn maintenance if she has artificial grass; I guess a life in plastic can be fantastic after all!

Putting Barbie Back in the Box

As a doll, Ms. Barbie probably doesn’t mind how her toyetic home is so exposed; the view of Barbieland from her bedroom is quite pretty, to boot. But let’s assume that this Barbie is human, with all of the desires that come with being a human, like privacy and security; if you feel comfortable sleeping in her fully-exposed bedroom, then kudos to you! That means it’s time to close her home off to the world. 

Barbie will need building permits for a major renovation like this. If we go by the fee schedule of Palm Springs, CA for 2023-2024 as a basis, she’ll be spending at least $500 in permits. Let’s break down the modest estimated cost of adding new walls to her Dreamhouse:

• Framing: $2,800 to $5,200
• Drywall: $600 to $1,200
• Doors (she’ll need new ones if she plans to get rid of the open-concept floor plan she has going on): $393 to $2,013
• Insulation: $1,000 to $5,650

These costs are based on the cost of a 20×20 room addition, so it’s likely that it might cost a bit more to fully close off Barbie’s Dreamhouse.

But wait a minute, we’re going to lose the playset aesthetic that makes this Dreamhouse so iconic! Well, we have a solution that keeps our human Barbie secure but still open, airy, and light.

Waving Through a Window

That’s right, we’re adding windows to the Dreamhouse! But not just any windows, mind you. We’re taking a page from mid-century modern architecture and adding large and sleek windows that give the illusion of openness while preserving the security of Barbie’s home. 

The perfect window styles for the mid-century modern aesthetic are casement windows, awning windows, picture windows, and sliding windows. Here’s how much it would probably cost to add these windows to Barbie’s Dreamhouse:

• Casement windows: $340 to $630 per piece
• Awning windows: $240 to $680 per piece
• Picture windows: $1,900 per 8’ x 8’ piece
• Sliding windows: $415 to $1,270 per piece
• Labor costs: $50 per hour

Barbie could also invest in some glass block windows for her bathroom if she wants lots of natural light while maintaining her privacy. Glass block windows will probably cost her around $155 to $840 to install.

A-door-ably Pink Doors

It’s a bit amusing how this Dreamhouse doesn’t have walls but has a large, pink front door — adorned with Bs and B-shaped handles, no less. But let’s stop thinking about the absurdity of this fabulous part of her home and shift to what would happen if it were to start breaking down. 

How much would it cost to replace this a-door-able front door? It would cost Barbie an average of $1,260, but she can theoretically spend as little as $335 (a bit unlikely because it’s a custom door) or as much as $5,165.

If Barbie were to add walls to close off the Dreamhouse, she would need a new patio door to give her easy access to her party pool and backyard. The average cost of a sliding glass patio door is around $2,500, but she can spend as little as $1,350 or as much as $3,450 for this new addition.

The Perfect Garage for Barbie’s Corvette

This version of the Dreamhouse doesn’t have a garage; Barbie leaves her Chevrolet Corvette — pink, of course — on the driveway. If Barbie would like to add a covered space for her cute car, she would need to spend anywhere from $12,720 to $20,140 for a one-car garage. 

This doesn’t include a workspace or storage space; for that, she’d need to shell out a cool $16,960 to $28,090.

A Fresh Coat of Fuschia

If Barbie were to add new walls to her Dreamhouse, she would certainly want them painted both inside and out. It would be a great time to get the rest of the Dreamhouse retouched as well so that it looks uniformly pink and perfect.

The average cost to paint the exterior of a three-story house like hers ranges from $8,130 to $10,840. Meanwhile, it would probably cost about $4,000 to $10,000 to paint her home’s interior walls.

Of course, she would need to buy the best shades of pink for the Dreamhouse; even the white paint in the Dreamhouse is actually a very pale pink. Even better is buying in bulk to save money! Here are some paint colors that would fit Barbie’s Dreamhouse:

• Rosco Fluorescent Pink. This was the exact paint that they used to paint the Dreamhouses for the Barbie movie; in fact, they went through so much that it caused a worldwide shortage! This pink is unapologetically bright, perfect for the Dreamhouse. Barbie will have to drive to San Diego or Huntington Beach (the equivalent of these places in her world, anyway) to get a few gallons; you, however, can snag this paint on Amazon.

• Backdrop X Barbie Dreamhouse. This collaboration features three paints: turquoise, purple, and of course, pink. If Barbie ever wanted to branch out of pink, these would be good colors to start with. These paints are available on Backdrop’s site or on Amazon starting at $49 for half a gallon.

A Rosy New Roof

Barbie’s Dreamhouse features a flat roof, which is par for the course for mid-century modern builds. If it’s leaking or otherwise not in pristine condition, she would need to pay anywhere from $300 to $1,175 to get her flat roof repaired by a pro. But what if Barbie’s roof is too run down for repairs? 

The cost of a flat roof replacement for a 1,000- to 1,500-square-foot home is around $13,500 on the low end and $20,250 on the high end of the scale. She might need to get a permit for this project too; let’s estimate that it’ll cost her around $250. Let’s hope she doesn’t need her roof replaced anytime soon!

Harnessing Sunshine

Did you know that Barbie became a renewable energy engineer in 2022? It would totally be up her alley to install solar panels to power her Dreamhouse. But before this project can get started, she’ll likely need to get a permit that we can estimate might cost around $400.

The cost of installing solar panels for a home is around $20,000 on average. It’s quite expensive, but that’s the price Barbie will have to pay to be more environmentally friendly and sustainable at home. Besides, the money she’ll save on her utility bills in the years to come will more than make up for the initial upfront cost.

However, that’s not the only cost Engineer Barbie will have to incur in the name of solar power. The average annual maintenance cost for a photovoltaic system is around $570.

Glimmering Gutters

You might be thinking, “Why would Barbie need gutters when she lives in pseudo-Palm Springs? It hardly rains there!” And to that we say that even a house in the middle of the desert can suffer water damage if it’s not prepared for the rare rainy day. 

Barbie is a forward thinker; it’s not that unlikely that she would consider gutters a good investment for the Dreamhouse if she lived in the Real World. Since it doesn’t look like her Dreamhouse has any — at least, at first glance — she’ll need to prepare anywhere between $888 to $2,496 to get gutters installed. She might even invest in gutter guards, which will cost her somewhere between $969 to $1,901.

Inevitably, she will need these cleaned in the future. Barbie can expect a bill to the tune of $120 to $200 when she avails of gutter cleaning services. Or, more likely for a girl who can and does do everything, she could roll up her sleeves and clean her gutters herself at least once per year. 

A Pristine Pool

Now it’s time to take a dive from the roof down to the pool – you could slip down Barbie’s water slide if you’d prefer to! The water in Barbieland, like most things, is plastic. But let’s assume that you can actually take a dip in the pool, shall we?

What is Barbie’s pool made of? Our best guess would be vinyl since that’s a plastic that’s used in building in-ground pools. Better yet, it’s possible to actually make a vinyl pool with custom shapes like Barbie’s. Replacing the vinyl liner will cost her around $3,000 to $4,200; if you’re curious, it probably cost her $24,000 to $44,000 to have the in-ground pool installed.

And that totally tubular pink pool slide? On the higher end of the scale, homeowners pay $16,000 for a pool slide. However, Barbie’s is three floors tall, so it’s probably more expensive than that.

Pesky Pests

Zoology is one of the many fields that Ms. Barbie has pursued. She most likely understands that mosquitoes play a role in our ecosystem, especially since most of the 3,500 species on Earth prefer to snack on plants. However, she’s also been a doctor, so she would understand why mosquito control is important, especially if she were a flesh and blood Barbie herself.

As long as we don’t kill too many of them, Barbie probably wouldn’t be opposed to mosquito control. The cost of mosquito treatments can run her anywhere between $350 to $550. Now, days by the pool and the Barbie-cues that Ken will host whenever he swings by will be mosquito free!

Pink Picket Fencing

Last on our list, but certainly not the least, is a pink picket fence. The Dreamhouses in The Barbie Way Cul-de-Sac don’t have any fences – except for Skipper’s Treehouse. While it may look a little odd, let’s humor the thought of the Barbie Dreamhouse having a cute pink picket fence to complete the look.

The cost of installing a picket fence ranges from $18 to $33 per linear foot. In the Real World, fences typically don’t come in pink. If it’s the same in Barbieland — although unlikely — it might cost Barbie around $1,850 to get her fence painted.

FAQ About Repairing Barbie’s Dreamhouse

Hire a Pro and Save Time Like Barbie

Barbie is perfectly capable of fixing up her Dreamhouse, but she is a very busy woman inspiring millions of girls worldwide. As such, it may be worth it for her to hire professionals to repair and renovate her home when needed; that way, she has time to be the Barbie we all know and love. She’ll need some R&R from time to time, too!

You might be like Barbie, too — skilled, but busy. If that sounds like you, then why not hire a LawnStarter pro near you to get your lawn in top form and other experienced home services pros near you to fix your roof, add windows, clean your gutters, or paint your house fluorescent pink (just like Barbie)? 

Main Photo Credit: Infographic by Juan Rodriguez

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