Every Gent Needs A Man Cave

And just like Elvis, men on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly finding ways to unwind in their own private spaces at home. Male visitors to Brad Pitt’s former home in Malibu, which was sold last year, were entertained in a room that featured a Wurlitzer jukebox, flat-screen television screens and Harley Davidson motorbike wheels. Not forgetting the “kegerator” — a refrigerator big enough to chill beer kegs. Pitt had spent a reported £150,000 furnishing the room.

Johnny Depp is another confirmed caveman. His man cave in Paris is filled with guitars and cases of wine from the south of France. Nicholas Cage, more eccentrically, has a man cave filled with rare Superman comics. You don’t need to be rich and famous to join the club, though...

The idea has caught on with a vengeance over here: from high-end basement city boltholes to garden rooms, attics and sheds in the shires. Britain’s chaps claim to need their space... Like your clothes or music, it says something about the sort of man you aspire to be. Some high-end man caves are so chic that they feel like art galleries. 

In ambience, the room should be the polar opposite of its female counterpart, the boudoir. But that does not necessarily mean a refrigerator stuffed with cans of lager, as immortalised by the television series Men Behaving Badly. It might be a stylish original vintage poster from a company such as AntikBar... But the quintessential props never vary. There is the comfy L-shaped sofa, the outsize television screen and some kind of surround-sound system, the more sophisticated the better. 

No two caves are the same, and nor should they be. The rooms make a very personal statement. Are you besotted with the Rolling Stones? Are you a collector of railway timetables? Have you kept every edition of The Beano since 1961? Now is the time to give your imagination full rein and let the boy inside you play to his heart’s content..."