How an interior designer and a custom installer made a major audiovisual installation look easy.

Dean Martin spins and shoots the bad guy out of the saloon’s rafters. Everyone seated in the living room applauds. Thanks to Martin, life is looking up for John Wayne, the beleaguered sheriff in Rio Bravo.

Actually, you’re a far cry from Rio anything. You’re nestled into a luxury condo in the Four Seasons overlooking Miami and the harbor.

In downtown Chicago, one family’s home theater brings life to the term “mixed media.”

When the family of one well-known TV broadcaster returned to Chicago, the city they loved most, it was inevitable that their new digs include a state-of-the-art media room.

Working together with Jeffrey Smith of First Impressions Theme Theatres of South Miami, Fla., the husband and wife envisioned creating a venue for home entertainment that is as animated, theatrical and multifaceted as the city itself.

A long-time Malibu resident who doesn’t watch television turns his beach house into a flat-screen showcase.

Investment banker William J. Chadwick’s father lived by several rules: “Billy,” he said, "You can play football or play in a band, but you can’t be in the stands because spectators are losers.”

Little wonder that full-grown Billy, who became a football and lacrosse star at St. Lawrence University, has little patience with television.

Technology and texture unite to foster one growing family’s togetherness.

“The eyes want to collaborate with other senses,” writes Finnish architect and theorist Juhani Pallasmaa. “All the senses, including vision, can be regarded as extensions of the sense of touch … They define the interface between the skin and the environment.”

Custom homebuilder and homeowner John Cioe would no doubt agree with Pallasmaa’s view—particularly since his own family’s comfortable Scottsdale, Ariz., haven is a testament to the importance of sensorial experience to matters of design.

A Kentucky client modifies First Impressions Theme Theatre Inc.’s showroom theater for his own private screening room.

A single man building a three-story riverside home in Bowling Green, Ky., decided it would be fun to be able to entertain his friends in a custom-built home theater whenever the Tennessee Titans and Western Kentucky basketball and football games are on television.

The next step in creating this dream space involved stumbling across a magazine story about First Impressions Themed Theatres Inc. and its custom-designed home theaters.

A Westchester County home with minimalist design touts the benefits of minimalist-looking technology.

This is a “less is more” story. A tale about a Westchester County home that is minimalist in décor—and minimalist in the amount of visible technology it showcases. But regardless of how minimalist everything looks at first blush, this house is robust in the kinds of technology it embraces—up front and behind the scenes.

A few years ago, Sheila and Jim Clary decided that they needed a home upon which they could impart their own touches. But they were busy—she as owner of a Chicago entertainment marketing agency and he as president of an executive benefits company. 

For sophisticated design with a total glam effect, Art Deco's alluring appeal defies shelf life. The iconic style, popularized since the 1930s in opulent restaurants, theaters, and luxury ocean liners, is redolent with a modernist attitude that's forever fresh, luxurious, and easy on the eye.

Getting caught in a turf war between design professionals is a situation clients dread. But the entertainment industry power couple who handpicked architect Richard Landry, interior designer Susan Cohen, and custom installer Murray Kunis—all professionals in the Los Angeles area—weren’t worried about clashing egos.

Meandering along nearly three acres of richly landscaped lakefront is a 12,000-square-foot mansion by the name of Mediterra. The elaborate mansion—a fully furnished spec home in Delray Beach’s Stone Creek Ranch—is designed to replicate an authentic Italian piazza.