The phrase “great room” evokes images of open, airy, expansive spaces capable of housing various activities in multiple gathering areas. Great rooms often have vaulted or double-height ceilings to generate a sense of awe, but such large volumes also can be overwhelming or cold if not thoughtfully...
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Living spaces these days tend to be open with little physical separation between public rooms. Walls of glass visually expand these spaces to include the outdoors. But sometimes it's nice to find a place to retreat and enjoy the view. Each of these projects features a cozy space-within-a-space that...
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Tree houses have grown beyond a few haphazardly assembled scraps of lumber nailed to a trunk. While tree house builders still use leftover materials, new techniques allow large, amenity-filled structures to be built without endangering the tree or the users.
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Indoor lap pools provide convenient daily exercise regardless of the weather, while their clever enclosures can open up to let in the best of Mother Nature. Climate- and humidity-controlled rooms feature skylights, sliding glass walls, and even star-filled ceilings to blend protective shelter with...
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One of the hallmarks of a well-designed custom home is the intersection of beautiful form with prosaic function. In the hands of a deft designer or clever craftsman a basic safety feature—like a guard rail—becomes eye-catching storage, as in the projects shown in this article.
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You won't find hay or livestock in the barns shown here. Instead they are outfitted with high-tech TVs, pool tables, catering kitchens, and whatever else the owners might need for some serious entertaining.
Not just for kids, built-in bunk beds offer fun and function in a compact space. Including a bunk room in a house that sees a lot of visitors makes good square-footage sense. "We utilize all of the little niches," says Brian Bosgraaf, president of design/build firm Cottage Home. They can provide a...
Whether it's a 5-year-old's slumber party or teens visiting for summer vacation, it's nice to have a place just for the kids.
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It can be a struggle to make the garage look good. A multi-car structure, especially if it's streetside, can overpower the main event—the owners' home. How to resolve the disparity between a big garage and a house scaled for humans? The designers of the three projects shown here shed a little light...
In the early days of multi-room audio, homeowners gladly took what they could get: AM/FM radio, a CD player, and maybe a tape player delivered to a few zones around the house.
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A bed is a microcosm of the house, a shelter within a shelter, says architect Mark Simon, who frequently designs built-in beds as part of a home's architecture. A built-in bed saves space when it includes compact, convenient storage, and it can free the room to focus on other things like a great...
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The puzzle piece stonework of this fireplace was designed “to look like an object sitting in the room,” says project architect David Leonard.
A two-story fireplace composed of native fieldstone draws family members to the great room of a Hudson Valley vacation compound.
The architect wanted to highlight not only the natural environs but the history of the land as well, and a house infused with stone seemed the way to go.
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There's nothing quite like a massive stone fireplace to recall distant times and places. Custom home pros like big rocks used in rustic as well as sleek ways to fit the home's mood and locale.
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