72 Hours in Joanna Gaines’s Waco

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Photo: Courtesy of MasterClass

There’s a surreal kind of satisfaction in discovering that a setting you’ve only seen in glimpses onscreen feels exactly as you’d expect in real life. Charmingly, this is the case at Joanna Gaines’s farmhouse in the tiny town of Crawford, Texas, just outside Waco. The grounds are a Lone Star safari for a city slicker like me: A nose-ringed Brahma bull, like a paid actor hitting his mark, greets me at the driveway and sets that storybook pastoral scene right away. Horses, goats, and chickens wander the 40-acre sprawl. One Great Pyrenees lopes over to say hello while another looks out from behind greenery flanking the porch’s Whiteselle Corsicana brick steps. On an average day, I picture the place buzzing with the attendant cacophony of five kids, but on the autumn afternoon of my visit, words are exchanged in whispers. Gaines is taping her MasterClass and it’s quiet on set.

Being selected by the online learning platform to serve as one of their esteemed instructors (among them Malala Yousafzai and Martin Scorsese) is particularly significant for the interior designer, who has risen to a position of prominence in her field approaching ubiquity, without formal training. The 46-year-old sat for a three-day shoot to distill her insights into an hour-and-a-half-long session—which is now streaming—for her masses of fans, and the farmhouse was the ideal setting for her to pass on some wisdom. After all, it is where she and her husband, Chip, and their children have lived throughout the precipitous rise of their empire in the decade since their wildly popular HGTV renovation show Fixer Upper put them on the map.

To put her popularity in perspective, Waco’s population is 148,000. Joanna boasts an Instagram following of about 14 million. As the demand for her content has grown, her role in the zeitgeist has become increasingly nebulous; she wears so many hats that no single title really covers it all. What does she put on TSA forms? Designer? Influencer? TV personality?

“Entrepreneur,” she tells me as we sit in her garden shed, one of several dreamy little structures on the property. There’s also the greenhouse, an herbarium (or “rose cottage,” where pressed bluebonnets fill the drawers, and shelves are lined with nested terra-cotta pottery), and an old-school, red-brick tornado shelter. After a few minutes in the heat that everyone local to the area assures me is actually milder than usual, I am drenched in sweat. Joanna, who woke up at 5:30 A.M., appears to be what beauty brands mean when they say “dewy.” When I ask what fuels her to push through such a packed schedule, she admits she’s had some chocolate.

The title “entrepreneur” feels somehow modest considering her status as a cultural power player, though it’s fitting. Joanna has sold not just her version of the modern farmhouse aesthetic to a nation clearly clamoring for cozy, accessible design, but with it, her coinciding lifestyle universe.

Wherever you’re sitting right now, you can likely find a way to stream episodes of Fixer Upper—or the Gaineses’ Magnolia network, which offers a slate of programming covering domestic delights from decor to cooking to gardening. You can stock your own abode with her expansive line of homewares, which run the gamut from kitchen appliances to children’s toys. En route to Texas, I picked up a copy of her Magnolia Journal magazine at LaGuardia Airport. After I touched down in Waco, my rideshare driver knew precisely what I meant when I said I was in town for the “Joanna Gaines experience.” The area is home not only to the Gaineses, but also to those namesake fixer-uppers, which include the private residences featured on the show as well as the Magnolia Table restaurant, Hotel 1928 downtown, and a defunct silo complex refashioned as a community gathering and retail center complete with a bakery, six themed stores, a church, and a baseball diamond. At the silos, I met a group of women who rode a bus all the way in from Minnesota for the Joanna Gaines experience. My own in-laws once made the pilgrimage from Sweden.

Though the beginnings of the Magnolia enterprise can be traced back 20 years to Joanna’s Waco home store and Chip’s local real estate operation, Fixer Upper is where many first met the Gaineses. In the original iteration of the show, which ran from 2013 to 2018, viewers got a look at what Joanna describes as “the story of my life: Chip will buy a house (he surprises me), I’m mad, and then out of that madness, I’m fueled to get it done”—“it” being a full restoration that transforms projects ranging from somewhat shoddy to total gut jobs into properties staged to Pinterest-worthy perfection, often bringing the new residents (and the show’s viewers) to tears.

On Fixer Upper, or just Fixer, as is the shorthand for everyone in the Gaines orbit, Joanna played the grounded, design-focused counterpart to Chip, whose bombastic energy and Labrador-like enthusiasm for demo day kept things playful but did not belie his own obvious entrepreneurial acumen. When they put their Fixer days behind them in 2018 at the peak of the show’s popularity, it was a calculated move. They were ready to craft a brand in their image with total creative control, which meant launching their Magnolia Network (on which they would premiere their reboot of Fixer) and tending to their myriad commercial pursuits across the retail and publishing realms.

“There was no one that was really encouraging us to [end Fixer on HGTV],” Joanna says, pointing out that some had cautioned them against the move. “They were, like, ‘Well, everything’s going to go away the second you...’” she trails off. “[But] for us, we knew family, home, and regrouping in this new season of life was the priority.” Since then, the pair have worked in tandem on raising their brood and making Magnolia the lucrative behemoth it is today. The duo’s net worth has been estimated as $50 million, while the value of the Magnolia brand, according to a source cited by OK! magazine, was as high as $750 million in 2021.

Magnolia—the flower—was first picked by Chip before it would be picked by Joanna to be the symbol of their empire. Originally, the fragrant bloom was an emblem of the couple’s love story. “When we were dating, he was so chivalrous,” she recalls of her early days with Chip, whom she married in 2003. “He would pull the car over and pick flowers [for me], anytime he saw a magnolia. That became kind of my flower,” she says. “And so when I chose the name ‘Magnolia,’ he was like, ‘Oh, yeah.’”

It took root. The businesses bloomed, and now there are “Magnolias” all around the Waco area: Magnolia Market at the Silos; Magnolia Table; and Magnolia HQ, the enormous downtown workplace from which the team operates. In the November 2024 issue of Magnolia Journal, Gaines writes that the atmosphere of the Hotel 1928, which opened in 2023, had to be “decidedly Magnolia” in style. To Joanna, the characterization refers to “this blend of old and new. When you step into the space, you know it started with a story. That’s my intent,” she says. “It’s about unearthing.”

She’s been inspired by many things in her work, from the Roaring Twenties to New York City glamour to midcentury-modern design, but to her hordes of fans, Joanna remains the patron saint of modern farmhouse style. Plenty of homeowners are drawn to the approachability of the look’s trademark warm wood beams, whitewashed brick, and country feel—though some bristle at the “live, laugh, love” of it all. The New York Times has gone as far as to declare the modern farmhouse “Today’s McMansion” in a feature that specifically labels the family’s influence as “the Gaines Effect.” But amid a design landscape that can feel stuffy and stuck-up, it’s not hard to understand how the little framed artworks made by little hands and magnets-on-the-fridge casual of a Gainesian house (and Joanna’s own unpretentious T-shirt-and-jeans Americana) has resonated with swaths of the US, farm dwellers and city slickers alike.

Joanna’s take on the aesthetic, which, as expected, appears to be the design brief for her own home, is defined by a few hallmark features. 1. An organic atmosphere with earthy textures and earth tones. Hers is a viridescent world: Sage green is a recurring character in the couple’s residential fixer-uppers, while deeper emerald hues are woven into more luxe projects, like Hotel 1928. 2. Analog sensibilities: Stylish sets of dominoes, puzzles, and vessels filled with matchbooks harken back to a pre-digital life. 3. Shiplap. It’s a firmly established Joannaism, just ask her fans. On Fixer, she would swoon peeling back drywall to reveal the rustic wood paneling, her reno equivalent of striking gold. With its common blemishes and nail holes, the shiplap look is not for everyone. But when Joanna says her style hinges on storytelling, she means those tiny flaws and all.

Such examples are prevalent in her world. For instance, the paw-print tracks of impatient pups run across a paved bit of the Gaineses’ driveway. She even finds such “imperfections” charming in Chip—referring to features of his face she lovingly considers to add character. And why would she want any of that smoothed over? It’s all part of the story. Recalling an alfresco soiree she hosted at the farmhouse years ago, Joanna remembers guests who had to come inside the dwelling for the restroom questioned her about the shiplap walls. “Everyone asked ‘When are you gonna finish the walls and putty over the nail holes?’” To her, those walls were already complete. “I see the craftsmanship of this home.”

Years later, Joanna’s massive following is proof positive that many today do indeed get her aesthetic. Without formal design training, though, the road to that fan-favorite status was marked by a few bruising moments of impostor syndrome. “I was a local boutique owner, and then I was doing design and renovations with Chip for years. And then, you get noticed by a production company—you’re naive, you think: ‘Maybe some people in Waco will see the show,’” she says. “And then you realize, six months later, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is national. People are watching our work.’ I remember, in that moment, thinking, ‘I’m going to get found out. Every ‘real’ designer is going to be, like, ‘Why is she on TV? She’s not real.’ I had to have a real come-to-Jesus moment with myself: If I want to stay true to what the client wants, their story, this is what design is for me.”

Though she’s clearly been embraced by many, her level of exposure also opens avenues for criticism. She has worried about things being taken out of context, being misrepresented, or misunderstood. In 2021, after the seismic reckoning on race in America spurred responses from everyone from syrup companies to the federal government, the couple’s politics were questioned by some. It was reported that the Gaineses had made a political contribution to Chip’s sister, who was a vocal opponent of education on critical race theory. Fixer never ended up featuring a same-sex couple, but former first lady Laura Bush did end up on an episode of the show. In a 2021 interview, Joanna expressed some concerns about her public image.

“The accusations that get thrown at you, like you’re a racist or you don’t like people in the LGBTQ community, that’s the stuff that really eats my lunch,” she said at the time. After the broader unrest reached its fever pitch, it seems that the commentary has mostly melted away. The family has played it pretty close to the chest when it comes to discussing such matters. But with her Korean heritage, Joanna is one of the few minorities among the tier of domestic goddesses filled with the Martha Stewarts, Ina Gartens, and Nigella Lawsons of the world. She is, she says, someone who has been made to feel othered in her life.

“I get emotional about it,” she says of the subject. “You’re talking about a little girl who, for years, tried to hide pieces of herself, because I felt as though I wasn’t included, or good enough. I looked like what I was: Korean—half Korean. Now that I’m older, I realize the things I was picked on for are what I’m the most proud of. Having to work out of that [headspace], even in my 40s, I am so empathetic towards people who feel different and who look different. I understand how much harder you have to work to just show up and say, ‘Well, I’m good! It’s me!’ And so, when I hear people labeling me as someone who wouldn’t like someone because of this or that reason, it couldn’t be further from who I am as a human being. We believe everyone has a seat at the table. I don’t say that to mean: ‘Well, but not you, and you, and a little bit of you.’ We wouldn’t put that statement on our website, in our restaurants, on our books because we kind of mean it. We truly mean everyone has a seat at the table.”

Whether or not you take her at her word, this “pull-up-a-chair” mission statement of sorts seems to be reflected in her design philosophy. Her rooms are spaces for “life” to happen in more than they are high-gloss showcases. There aren’t untouchable “great rooms”—the kind of salon area your grandmother insisted no one could ever go in—in a Joanna house. She often favors a vintage piece precisely because of the patina on it, the feeling that it’s already lived a completely different life with a completely different family. She makes spaces meant to be interacted with, for games played with her babies, feasts shared with friends, quiet moments with a book.

So much time and heart has been poured into carving out these spaces in the Waco area that she really can’t ever see leaving. In another life, she’d be in New York. We talk about the city and her eyes light up; she spent some time there for an internship during her senior year at Baylor University—a period where she sometimes felt lost in the shuffle and found refuge in small local boutiques. Those beautifully curated spaces that made her feel at peace amid the madness of Manhattan planted a seed that would one day make the self-described homebody a household name.

“I thought, when I lived in New York, that I was going to find someone in New York City and that’s where I was going to live out my life. And I didn’t meet that guy there. I met the farmer and rancher Chip Gaines right here in Waco, Texas,” she says, without a hint of longing. “New York City is always a place I will frequent. I felt like the dream started in my heart there, in college. And so, every time I return, I leave that place with a sense of gratitude for what that time in my life taught me, what it inspired. But Waco, to me, feels like home.” And with every one of those flip houses, new businesses, and projects at her own farmhouse, the family’s roots have been driven down deeper into the Blackland Prairie soil, anchoring her firmly and happily in place.

“When I imagine me and Chip in our 80s, it’s here,” she says. “What we’ve created in this space is our family story. This is where we get grounded. This is the source, for sure.” Those golden years are a long way off, but it’s easy to picture the two of them retired and hanging out on that porch. She’s already got some sweet rocking chairs picked out there, primed for that exact moment.

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

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