In a rural Carolina town where the number of paved roads can be counted on one hand, change can be as slow as the shrimp boats meandering down the river. So when a city couple purchased an 1880s waterfront home here 14 years ago, they were content to live with its cramped quarters and imperfect details until they felt ready to do something about it. A decade later, they were ready.

As any Hollywood observer will tell you, the secret to a good face-lift is to improve what’s there without betraying what came before. By this measure, the surgery that Polhemus Savery DaSilva performed on a Cape Cod home was very good, indeed.

When a Connecticut couple went looking for a weekend house on the water, they never imagined their three-year search would lead them to a home only 20 minutes from their own. But as they soon discovered, getting away from it all isn’t necessarily a question of distance.

Vacation homes have always been a rite of passage for novice architects—a way for indulgent family members to give the kid a break until the Big Time beckons. Luckily, someone forgot to tell Tom Kundig. Despite a meteoric career that has earned him dozens of awards, the Seattle architect can’t resist the siren call of the cabin. So when contractor Jim Dow asked Kundig to design a diminutive retreat in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, the architect accepted without hesitation.

FRED ALBERT: Here we are in a mountain retreat in Cashiers, North Carolina, and there’s not an antler chandelier, buffalo check or twig chair in sight. PHOEBE HOWARD: My client didn’t want typical “mountain-themed” furniture and fabrics. She wanted it to be warm, she wanted to incorporate a lot of wood, she wanted a lot of nice antiques. But it rains here a lot, so she wanted it to be light and airy.

Jeff and Kimber Wysong’s century-old beach house in Bainbridge Island, Washington, is blessed with sunny, rambling rooms and a generous back porch that frames postcard-worthy views of Mount Rainier and Puget Sound. The setting may look like something out of the Saturday Evening Post, but when the Wysongs bought the place five years ago the kitchen was strictly Saturday Night Fever.

If the little black dress is the ne plus ultra of fashion, then the little black ceiling is the enfant terrible of decor — a mischievous little devil that provokes instead of placates, and makes any room a little bit special.

White walls reflect light, but they seldom reflect warmth—a problem that has plagued man ever since he first set trowel to plaster. But white houses don’t have to be cold and clinical, as Stuart Silk Architects recently proved with the remodel of a home atop Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill. Tempering white’s chilly hauteur with warm woods and a host of theatrical flourishes, the architects injected an air of understated glamour that’s more Fred and Ginger than Mies and Meier.

Forget the panoramic view of Puget Sound and the unbroken chain of mountains etched across the horizon. What really attracted Carol Bobo to her neighbor’s North Seattle property was the light. Plentiful and golden, it brought the landscape into startling relief, and reflected off the house to give people an almost-angelic glow.

Growing up as a tomboy in Avon, Kellie Burke was determined to do everything her three brothers did—only better and faster. By the time she got to Skidmore College, though, she’d traded her shredded jeans for red lizard boots and a rhinestone cowboy hat. “I don’t think I’ve ever really blended in my whole life,” confesses the interior designer. “I like to be a little over the top. Maybe a lot over the top.”