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Written by Chris Demaillet, Founder of Montclair Chef. I lived in as a private chef for the better part of two decades. Here's the honest version of the live-in vs. live-out question.

Every principal who hires a full-time chef hits this question early. Live-in or live-out? Most agencies will tell you it depends on your property. That's part of it, but it's not the real answer.

The real answer is about how often you're home, how your household runs after 9pm, and whether you can live with someone you employ being part of the daily landscape of your home. I lived inside UHNW households for nearly 20 years as their chef. I've watched both arrangements work brilliantly and watched both fall apart. The right model is rarely about the property. It's about the household culture.

Live-in works when both sides treat it as a long-term arrangement built on clear boundaries. It fails when either side treats it as convenience without rules.

What live-in actually means at the UHNW level

Live-in private chef arrangements at the UHNW level are not "the chef stays in the spare room." They're structured employment with defined accommodations. Typically:

• A dedicated staff apartment or staff wing of the residence, ideally with its own entrance
• Separate kitchen and laundry from the family's
• Private bathroom
• Often a small living area
• WiFi, utilities, and basic furnishings included

Live-in compensation packages reflect this. The chef receives a base salary plus accommodation, which is often valued at $30,000 to $60,000 per year depending on the location. In London or Monaco, the housing value can be even higher. So a live-in chef earning a $200,000 base might have a fully loaded package equivalent to $250,000 to $280,000.

If your property doesn't have proper staff accommodation, you don't have a live-in arrangement. You have a chef sleeping in a guest room, which works for a week and never works long-term.

When live-in works

There are five household patterns where live-in is clearly the right model.

1. The family travels frequently and unpredictably

If the principal flies to New York on Thursday and decides on Friday morning that the family is having dinner there Sunday, a live-in chef can make that happen. Live-out chefs need notice. Live-in chefs can pack a bag in 90 minutes.

For families with private aviation and a multi-residence pattern, live-in is almost always the right choice. The chef travels with the family, lives in the staff quarters at each property, and maintains continuity across all of them.

2. The household runs on irregular hours

Some principals eat dinner at 6pm. Others eat at 11pm. Some eat alone three nights a week and host 14 people on Saturday. If your household's eating patterns don't fit a standard schedule, live-out becomes impractical fast. A live-in chef can adapt to the day's actual shape.

3. The property has proper staff infrastructure

Estates designed for full-time staff (with separate staff entrances, dedicated staff kitchens, staff dining areas) are built for live-in arrangements. The geography of the property creates natural separation between family space and staff space. Both sides can live their lives without overlap.

4. The chef is at a life stage that suits it

A chef in their late 20s or 30s with no children, or with a partner who travels for work themselves, or with a partner who's open to relocating, can thrive in live-in arrangements. They get prime accommodation, premium compensation, and exposure to a global lifestyle they couldn't access otherwise.

A chef in their 50s with school-age children at home is usually a poor live-in candidate. Not because of skill, but because the arrangement won't sustain.

5. The principal values continuity above all

Some principals deeply value the same chef being there every morning, every dinner, every week. The familiarity is part of what they're paying for. Live-in supports that. Live-out interrupts it with travel time, days off, and the natural friction of someone arriving and leaving the property daily.

When live-out works

Three patterns where live-out is the better model.

1. The household runs on a structured schedule

Breakfast at 7am. Lunch at 1pm. Dinner at 7:30pm. The principal works from home with a defined rhythm. The chef arrives at 6am, leaves at 9pm, takes weekends off (mostly).

This structure suits live-out beautifully. The chef can have a stable personal life, a home of their own nearby, and a clean separation between work and personal hours. Many of the best private chefs choose this model deliberately.

2. The principal values strict separation between family and staff

Some households want their staff at arm's length. The chef is a professional, treated with respect, but not part of the daily fabric of the home outside service hours. Live-out enforces this naturally. The chef arrives, works, leaves. No overlap, no awkward weekend encounters in the hallway.

This isn't a worse model. It's a different one. Some of the longest-running private chef placements I know of are live-out arrangements that have run 7 to 10 years precisely because the boundaries are clear from day one.

3. The property doesn't have appropriate staff accommodation

If you're in a Manhattan penthouse with no staff quarters, or a Monaco apartment where the chef would be sleeping behind a curtain in the dining room, you don't have a live-in option. Forcing live-in into the wrong property is how you lose chefs in month four.

For city residences specifically, live-out is usually the cleaner answer. The chef commutes from their own apartment 20 minutes away, and the household keeps its privacy.

The hybrid model most agencies don't discuss

There's a third option that suits many UHNW households better than either pure live-in or pure live-out. I call it the hybrid model.

The chef has their own residence nearby (often a flat the household provides or contributes to) and works on a live-out basis at the primary residence. When the family travels, the chef travels with them and lives in staff accommodation at the secondary residence.

This model works particularly well for:

• Families with a primary residence in a city (where staff accommodation is constrained) and seasonal residences elsewhere (where it isn't)
• Chefs with established lives near the primary residence who don't want to fully relocate
• Households that want continuity during travel but separation at home

The compensation typically reflects both arrangements. Slightly higher base salary than pure live-out, partial housing contribution at the primary residence, full live-in accommodation when travelling.

I structure roughly a third of the placements I make this way. Most agencies don't even propose it. They default to pure live-in or pure live-out without asking what the household actually needs.

The burnout signal at month 4 to 6

This is the part most principals don't see coming. The biggest risk in live-in arrangements isn't a bad chef. It's a good chef who burns out from over-availability.

The pattern looks like this. The chef moves in. The first month is excellent. The household appreciates having someone who can pull together a 9pm dinner with two hours' notice. The chef appreciates the prime accommodation and the variety of the work.

By month three, the boundary between "working" and "available" has blurred. The chef is rarely fully off-duty because they live on the property. They start saying yes to requests at all hours because it's easier than enforcing limits. Their personal time disappears.

By month six, the chef is exhausted, resentful, and starting to look for an exit. The household doesn't know why. The chef can't explain it without sounding ungrateful.

This is preventable, but only with explicit structure from day one. The questions I make principals answer before any live-in placement:

• Which days and hours are the chef's official off-time?
• What's the protocol when there's a request during off-time?
• Where does the chef eat their own meals?
• Where does the chef spend their off-time, on the property or off?
• Who covers when the chef has a vacation week?
• What's the principal's policy on the chef having guests in the staff apartment?

If these can't be answered before the chef moves in, the burnout is already on the calendar. It just hasn't arrived yet.

Salary and tax implications

The financial picture differs meaningfully between the two models. Quick overview:

Live-in chef

• Base salary typically lower because housing is provided
• Total package (base + housing + utilities + meals) often comparable to live-out
• Tax treatment varies by jurisdiction (in some markets, housing has tax implications for the chef)
• Household cost is real but partially embedded in property overhead

Live-out chef

• Higher base salary because chef pays own housing
• Lower hidden cost to the household (no accommodation, utilities, food contributed)
• Cleaner tax structure in most markets
• Chef has fuller control over their own financial planning

For multi-residence travel placements specifically, live-in is usually 15 to 25 percent more cost-effective for the household because the property is already there. For single-residence placements in expensive cities, the math gets closer.

A good private chef placement specialist will model both options for your specific situation rather than push you to a default.

What I actually tell principals

When a principal asks me which model to choose, I ask them three questions:

1. How often is your household at full operating tempo, and how often is it quiet? If it swings wildly, live-in. If it runs steady, live-out works.
2. Does your property have real staff infrastructure, or are you imagining you can carve out space? Real infrastructure or live-out. Anything else fails.
3. How do you feel about your chef being in your home when you're not entertaining? Some principals don't notice. Others find it claustrophobic. There's no wrong answer, but the answer determines the model.

The principals who answer all three honestly land in the right model. The ones who try to force a model onto a household it doesn't fit are the ones who lose chefs at month seven.

Travelling chef placements specifically

For families with three or more residences who want one chef across all of them, the model is functionally live-in by default. The chef has accommodation at each property and moves with the family.

This is a specialised role. Not every great chef can travel well. The placement requires:

• Strong logistics ability (provisioning across countries, customs, dietary continuity)
• Emotional resilience (constant movement, time zone changes, no fixed home base)
• Cultural adaptability (different staff teams at each property, different supplier networks)

The compensation for these roles typically runs 15 to 25 percent above single-residence base salaries, reflecting the additional complexity. We treat travel placements as a separate category at Montclair Chef because the chef pool is meaningfully smaller.

Making the right call

If you're trying to decide between live-in and live-out for your specific household, the honest answer is that it depends on more than the property. It depends on your household's daily rhythm, the principal's tolerance for proximity, the chef's life stage, and how often you travel.

The wrong model creates a chef quit at month seven. The right model creates a placement that runs five years.

If you'd like to walk through the specifics of your situation, schedule a confidential consultation and we'll work out which model fits your household, before you start the search.

About the author

Chris Demaillet is the Founder of Montclair Chef, a chef-founded private chef placement agency for UHNW families, family offices, and estates, headquartered in Monaco with operations in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and London.

Michelin-trained under Michel Roux OBE, Chris spent nearly 10 years as personal chef to Amancio Ortega (founder of Zara) aboard the 70m M/Y Drizzle, and has cooked for billionaire industrialists, Middle Eastern royal families, a British Lord, and American tech principals across more than 25 years in private service.

He is the author of The Private Chef Guide (2026) and The Yacht Chef Guide (2020).

Read Chris's full story or schedule a confidential consultation.

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