Luxury Architectural Interior Design

The interior design of your home should reflect the character of the 'exterior design'. A French, English or Italian style home should have the period style moldings and other decorative design details inside to complement the facade treatment. Proportions of interior arches, ceiling treatments, stairways, paneling, etc. should be as carefully designed as like aspects of the exterior. Architecture is important, whether interior or exterior and should maintain a stylistic integrity.

Luxury Architectural Living room

Luxury Architectural Dining room

Luxury Architectural Bathroom

Luxury Architectural Family room

Luxury Architectural Kitcen

Elegant Complex Apartment Design in Soho

Complex Apartment Design in Soho Photo Gallery

As most of you already know, Soho is short for “South Houston” and refers to a neighborhood in Manhattan, New York . This complex apartment design seems to counterweight the crazy and chaotic lifestyle of this particular USA region. The flat features an interesting terrace of impressive dimensions, a place of relaxation and promising outdoor parties. Interiors are airy and spacious. The living-room houses an interesting white bookcase and a dining area. Original looking wooden stairs connect the flat with the upper terrace. We find this place to be a pleasing contemporary refugee, a symbol of living life “in the big city”

Home theater cinema - dedicated, detached and high-end

This is a high end idea for a media room. In fact, I don't think the term "media room" even applies here... If you have a lot of land, consider either converting an existing detached structure (a garage, an oar house, a barn - what have you) into a classy stand alone home theater or creating a new building with the same purpose. The advantages of such an approach are many:

• You can stay away from any sources of noise.
• No need to worry about the noise generated by the home theater itself.
  
• The new building can be positioned to minimize daylight.
• You can entertain various groups of people without having to really open up your house to anyone!

Depending on the climate in your area, a passage could be created from your main dwelling. A separate parking lot is also a plus.

See also:
Media room pictures

Mini fridge for the home theater

>Here are a few factors to consider when you are choosing an important home theater accessory - a fridge.

• Avoid shiny surfaces. A wood finish is preferable to steel, chrome or anything that can reflect light.
• It must be very quiet. Better yet, make sure you can easily turn the unit off with an accessible switch. As long as all you keep in it is drinks, this should be no problem.
• Consider installing the fridge in a specifically designed enclosed space. This will resolve the problem of shiny surfaces. Also, you can use extra sound-proofing materials - they can even double as a way of insulating the unit.
• If you have a lot of seating in your home theater, consider installing a couple of mini-fridges. This will cut down on excessive walking, talking and passing of the drinks during the show. Smaller units will also be a lot easier to fit into whatever design you are planning. A big fridge really only belongs in the kitchen!
• Consider if a cooler would serve your needs just as well. You will cut down on electricity, the noise and possible interference with the audio signal.

See also:
5 Home Media Room Must Have's

Replica phonograph for your steampunk themed TV room.

I am not really all that keen on themed home theaters. It is highly unlikely that anyone ever intends to watch only movies that go with a certain media room decor. At the very best, you will eventually become blind to all the niceties you spend lots of money on, so only visitors can truly appreciate your efforts. But maybe that's worth it to you?

Anyway, I am rather partial to steampunk design principles. However, my interpretation of steampunk is a bit demanding. I want to see brand new objects, designed according to the aesthetics of the age of steam. They must be well-made and fully functional. If you share these lofty ideas, here is an item that would be a great addition to a suitable media room. This phonograph is a replica of and old Gramophone, but apart from a turntable it features a CD player and AM/FM radio. The replica is produced by Technosonic.

If you don't need modern audio capabilities, this replica RCA (sold on Amazon) is perhaps even more stylish. It comes complete with the famous "His Master's Voice" logo. The design is from the early 1900s (1902-1916, to be more precise). Of course, it would be silly to use this little gem on a regular basis to play 78 rpm records. But it suffices to know that it would work, should you ever have to use it!

Home theater power conditioner and battery backup

Home theater power conditioner is probably something you have to worry about only if you have a very serious system in place. Also known as AC regenerators, these devices take AC wall power converts it to DC power, and then reconverts it back to "clean" AC power. The idea behind this is to protect your equipment and possibly improve the quality of image/sound. A backup battery is something that you should think about if you live in an area with frequent blackouts and generally unstable electric power. Not a bad thing to have if you want to make sure that your devices do not have to be reinitialized every time there is a power outage. Both these features (power conditioning and battery backup), along with voltage regulation are combined (rather inexpensively!) in APC AV H15 Home Theater 1500VA Power Filter and Power Conditioner:

From APC's power engineering labs comes the H Type Power Conditioner, a single unit that delivers pure, stable power for high performance AV. The preferred choice of power protection for high performance home entertainment systems, the H Type Power Conditioner combines surge protection, isolated noise filtering, and voltage regulation. Finally, there's a solution that eliminates stress on component power supplies, eradicates EMI/RFI and voltage fluctuation as a source of AV signal degradation, and protects equipment from damaging surges, spikes, voltages fluctuations, and lightning.

See also:
ButtKicker home theater subwoofer - audio connection to the action
Architectural speakers (inwall speakers) - pros and cons

Hip and chic TVs - home theater meets fashion

This may be one of the most overlooked aspects of media room design: the actual TVs! It is usually taken for granted that the TV you are picking for your home media room is the right size, preferably 1080p, has a nice viewable angle and so on. Modern TVs are simply indistinguishable from each other: big black rectangles. Very rarely a little bit of silver or white is introduced. This, however, is only the impression you will get when visit the show rooms. Some manufacturers have limited edition TVs that can easily become true centerpieces of your design.

A very simple route to achieve an ultra modern and almost futuristic view is to make a very thin TV, and many companies have just such sets. Such is the Hitachi's 1.5 series:



JVC has a similar series named Procision. Slim TVs are also available from Sharp, LG and Panasonic.

Samsung has a line called Touch of Color. Here is the description:
While the crystal-like bezel frame catches light beautifully, it actually reduces reflection of light off the bezel. And since the rich red color is injection molded for a blown glass effect, instead of spray painted, there is less environmental impact. It's easy on your eyes as well as on the environment.



Sharp Aquos SE94 is said to have a "cornerstone design." This involves " textured finish with eye-catching corner accents and detachable bottom speakers to match modern home décors."

Swappable bezels (similar to software skins and cell phone panels that were popular not too long ago) are also used in Sony's XBR series.

In most cases, these hip TV sets are just as attractive in terms of tech features as their black rectangle counterparts. If you want to make your TV stand out, check out what's available! You may be surprised by the ever expanding options.