Residential
What began as a request for a better home theater became a more ambitious exercise in making technology disappear into the rhythm of this Newport Coast residence.
The 5,200-square-foot home already had the bones of a dedicated entertainment space, but the homeowners wanted something more flexible than a single-purpose theater. They wanted the impact of a true cinema for movie nights without giving up a brighter, more relaxed room for everyday viewing and family time. That brief set the tone for a larger renovation: rather than layering new devices onto the home, Daisy Orange County worked with the homeowner and builder Wyss Construction to rethink how entertainment, lighting, audio, comfort, and security could operate as one coordinated environment.
The media room became the clearest expression of that idea. With one command from a handheld remote or touchscreen, the room shifts from theater to casual lounge. A 150-inch projection screen retracts into the ceiling, revealing an 85-inch Samsung Frame display behind it. Lighting levels adjust at the same time, while motorized shades rise to bring natural light back into the room. The result is not a room with two screens so much as a room with two distinct personalities.
That distinction matters in a luxury home, where technology has to support the design intent instead of competing with it. A dedicated cinema can be dramatic, controlled, and immersive. A family media room needs to feel lighter, more available, and less ceremonial. In many projects, the homeowner is forced to choose one experience or accept compromises in both. Here, the integration strategy allowed the room to move between modes without asking the family to manage the complexity behind the scenes.
Behind that simple transition is careful sequencing. The projection screen, display, lighting, shades, and audio all need to respond together, and the timing has to feel natural. Daisy Orange County used a centralized automation platform to coordinate those systems, with a controller managing the room behavior and a surround-sound package built around in-wall speakers, subwoofers, and amplification. According to the project team, the media room transformation was completed in just ten days.
The theater upgrade also opened the door to a broader conversation about the home’s aging infrastructure. As the discovery process continued, the homeowners chose to extend the renovation beyond the media room and address lighting, distributed audio, security, access control, networking, and long-term support.
Throughout the residence, older lighting keypads were replaced with updated dimmers and keypads that better fit the contemporary interior. More importantly, the new lighting system gave the family a way to shape the home around daily routines, from entertaining to quiet evenings to coming and going. As with the media room, the goal was less about calling attention to a system and more about making the home easier to live in.
Audio followed the same design-first logic. Daisy Orange County introduced whole-home music using invisible architectural speakers, allowing sound to move through the house without visible hardware interrupting the interior architecture. That choice required close coordination with Wyss Construction. Speaker locations had to be planned, framed, and finished so the walls and ceilings still read as clean, uninterrupted surfaces.
The outdoor areas were brought into the experience as well, with exterior speakers extending music beyond the home’s interior. A second Samsung Frame television in the family room created another flexible entertainment zone, reinforcing the project’s broader theme: connected technology should support how a family actually uses its spaces, not pull every room into the same mode of interaction.
Security and access control were also folded into the unified environment. The installation includes a video door station, smart locks, alarm integration, surveillance cameras, network infrastructure, and power management. These are the kinds of systems that can easily become fragmented in a residence, especially when they are added over time. In this project, they were consolidated so the homeowner could manage the home through a more coherent interface and the integrator could support the system remotely as needs evolve.
That long-term support piece is worth noting. A connected home is not static once installation is complete. Software updates, remote monitoring, network reliability, and serviceability all determine whether the experience still feels premium years later. By building remote management into the project, Daisy Orange County positioned the system to be maintained without making every adjustment feel like a service event.
For architects, designers, builders, and integrators, the Newport Coast project is a useful reminder that smart home technology is most successful when it is planned as part of the finished environment. The strongest moments here are not the product list. They are the clean ceiling line after invisible speakers are installed, the room that can become a theater without staying trapped as one, and the homeowner experience that feels simple because the technical choreography has already been resolved.
In that sense, the project lands where connected design should: technology is present everywhere it improves the home, and quiet everywhere it could distract from it.
Project Details
Integrator
Daisy Orange County
Builder
Wyss Construction
Key Technologies
- Control4 automation platform, remotes, touchscreens, controller, lighting controls, video door station, and related ecosystem support
- Samsung Frame displays
- Screen Innovations projection screen
- Lutron Triathlon motorized shades
- Focal in-wall speakers
- JL Audio subwoofers
- Triad amplification
- Sonance Invisible Series speakers
- Episode outdoor speakers
- Yale smart locks
- Qolsys alarm
- Luma surveillance cameras
- WattBox power management
- Ubiquiti Wi-Fi
- OvrC remote management
