It wasn’t long ago that the residential garage was nothing more than an afterthought. When it came to home design, the garage was the last space to be crossed off the homeowner’s list and thus usually received the least amount of attention. As Michael Rhodig, a designer of luxury garage environments and the founder of GarageMahals (www.garagemahals.com), explains, "The garage is the final frontier of home improvement. Up until now, the garage has been this large, dysfunctional junk bin."

Rhodig’s foray into the design of luxuriously appointed garages began with his own in 2003. At the time, the notion of a "man cave" was still in its infancy, and the term barely resonated with most people. But today, with the acceptance of a dedicated space tailored to men, the garage gradually is gaining prominence as a room teeming with haute design possibilities. Still, Rhodig believes there’s a long way to go. "We’re not socially conditioned to expect anything from a garage," he says. "A garage can be anything and still be acceptable. There’s a misconception that if a house has a certain look the garage has to flow with that. It doesn’t. The garage is a unique space; it is a blank canvas with no preconceived notions of what it can be."

While the possibilities of a garage may be limitless, some within the garage-outfitting industry, such as Chad Haas, owner of Vault (www.vaultgarage.com)—a firm specializing in garage cabinetry, floor tiling, doors, lighting, and nostalgic accents—are specific about what separates exceptional garages from the ordinary. "In my opinion, the one thing that makes a garage great is that it reflects the owner’s personality," he says. "If you knew nothing about him, you could walk through the doors and get an idea of who he is. You instantaneously get an impression of what he likes and his passions, the things that inspire him."

Rhodig shares a similar philosophy when it comes to designing a garage, and though he creates themed spaces that he says will be "as high-quality as the automobile itself," the 52-year-old designer, who has a background in mechanical engineering and construction, will never settle for a predictable or obvious end result. "It’s creating something so unexpected and different and unique that it turns out to be the favorite room of the house," he says. "It’s never taking the racecar and hanging it on the wall. Instead, it’s taking elements of the racecar and building them into the items that I’m going to put into the garage."

Contrary to common assumption, when it comes to a designer garage, total project cost does not always correlate with the most successful finished product. It is true that clients seeking a GarageMahals-designed space should expect to invest heavily in the project, but Haas has seen far more economical garages that have proven to be equally successful. "It doesn’t always require a large budget to make a garage unique and great; it has everything to do with style," he says. "Some customers want to push the envelope, but that can ruin the effect. I’ve seen multimillion-dollar garages that aren’t as successful as some that only cost $50,000. It’s all about doing something that’s different."

Different is exactly what Phillips Smith was after when he commissioned Rhodig in 2009 to design a showroom-style garage at his 35,000-square-foot retirement home in Paradise Valley, Ariz., a small community northeast of Phoenix. Smith had worked with Rhodig on a previous garage years before, but with this second project he wanted something that had a look and feel distinct from that first garage. "When I built this retirement home, I wanted a great garage that blends the old and the new," he says.

To accomplish that task, Rhodig found inspiration from his client’s past. The 74-year-old Smith graduated from West Point in 1961 and, in addition to serving in the army and navy, he also served as a pilot in the air force for more than seven years. Smith continued to fly airplanes for decades following his years of service and so, when it came to designing the partitions that would separate each of the four bays in the main section of the garage, Rhodig created 13-foot-high silver motifs that could be interpreted either as a nod to aviation or as a nod to the past. That, Rhodig says, is their greatest feature. "I try to include things that evoke the essence of something that you’re familiar with, but it’s like you’re reading clouds," he says. "Some people see an aircraft wing; other people see the classic, old tail fins of the ’50s and early ’60s."

However, of equal significance to Smith are the 10 garage doors, which Rhodig designed and manufactured out of foam-filled fiberglass. It’s a noteworthy detail, given the home’s location in southern Arizona, especially since those doors are more or less impervious to the scorching rays of the sun that characterize the American southwest. "They’ve been up for three years and there’s no sun damage at all," Smith says. "If they were mahogany there wouldn’t be anything left."

The interiors of the doors are also unique, since Rhodig decorated them with murals made up of historic Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport photographs from the 1930s. As Smith explains, those murals, which include photos of Amelia Earhart’s planes (among others), are what stand out the most, even considering that the 1,500-square-foot garage includes numerous other accents, such as restored, vintage gas pumps and automotive-themed furniture. "The most interesting thing is the films on the doors," he says. "People gravitate towards them. When they come in from the house that’s the first thing that they see; then they turn around and see all the other details—the pumps and cabinets and all the handiwork."

Smith’s garage wasn’t an inexpensive endeavor—with the restored gas pumps, Smith says he spent about $350,000—but given the magnitude of his home, he says he wasn’t about to let his garage be a knockoff. "I have a library that’s all done in mahogany and hand-carved," he says, "and that library isn’t more detailed than this garage."

After sketching designs of his ideal garage over the course of a decade, Rick Principe knew what he wanted; and like Phillips Smith, his commitment was to the details. As a member of the Checkered Flag 200, a fund-raising group affiliated with the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, Principe had organized over the last seven or eight years numerous garage tours throughout the United States, as well as in South America and Europe, and those intimate tours of other collectors’ garages and museums laid the groundwork for what Principe wanted to create for himself. The challenge was finding the right contractors who could execute his vision. "I knew the type of stone that I wanted and the type of beams that I wanted," he says, "but I had to search for the people who understood what I wanted."

As Principe explains, in their quest to amass a collection of automobiles, most collectors reach a point where they outgrow the storage space with which they started. Principe was no different. What he wanted most of all was a space at his home that could accommodate his collection of 20 cars. Fortunately, Principe’s property in the Thousand Oaks region of Southern California already was home to a few large barns used for storing farm equipment. By converting one using stone that matched his existing home, installing climate-controlling technology, and replacing the structure’s wooden beams with a more eye-catching steel variety, Principe was ready to finalize his 5,000-square-foot garage. But he still had a choice to make. "I had to decide if I wanted a memorabilia warehouse, or if I wanted to create a gallery to focus on the cars as an art and to not distract from the beauty of the cars," he says.

He chose the gallery and says that because it’s an all-stone building with high ceilings and steel beams, "it feels like an old-time garage or car dealership that you’d see in the ’30s or ’40s."

"I enjoy going in the garage and spending time there just like a museum or an art gallery," he adds. "I think the cars are just as enjoyable to look at as they are to drive." Because of that, Principe spends considerable time there. He explains that he’s now at a stage in his collecting where he no longer yearns for more cars. Instead, he’s focused on improving the overall quality of his collection and learning as much as he can about the cars that he owns. He estimates that 30 percent of his time at home is spent involved with his collection in one way or another, but with a comfortable museum-like space at his disposal, that pastime is more enjoyable than ever before. "With the ceramic tile flooring, the neon signs and memorabilia on the walls, the bar and the couches," he says, "it’s a very comfortable area where people can sit and have a drink and look over the car collection."

When Francis Wisniewski called Michael Rhodig, he wasn’t looking to create a comfortable room in which he could kick back and relax. Instead, Wisniewski wanted a minimalist space that could store and showcase his collection of mostly restomod muscle cars. He was in the process of transforming a defunct warehouse in downtown Chicago into a new home, and he wanted to turn the bottom floor into a pristine garage. Measuring more than 5,000 square feet, the space gave Rhodig plenty of room with which to work, but the old brick and concrete flooring; a ceiling overrun with exposed wires, air ducts, and plumbing; and the remnants of factory machinery lying around made the job anything but easy.

The finished space transformed the floor into a showroom of bold, solid colors and included a nod to Las Vegas, which played off Wisniewski’s existing gambling room and also paid homage to the City of Lights—a destination that Wisniewski had visited about 10 times a year prior to buying a home there three years ago. "We emphasized the height in the columns that were already there," Wisniewski says of the finished space. "The way we used solid colors, it makes it look bigger. It already was big, but now it looks grand."

The 38-year-old doesn’t do any of the maintenance work on his cars himself, so a functional garage in the traditional sense wasn’t necessary. Instead, Wisniewski wanted a space that could let passersby appreciate the individual cars within his collection. "I didn’t want the cars to be outshined by the garage," he explains. "The garage emphasizes the cars instead of becoming the emphasis."

But when Wisniewski entertains—especially large groups of people—he says the garage, which is accented by a bar and provides direct access to his gambling room, provides the perfect locale. "It’s a great backdrop for a party," he says. "It’s not necessarily one that you’d hang out in, but with the bar, it’s much more of a party showroom. It’s definitely an entertaining space."

Gary Pennington also has done his fair share of entertaining in his garage, although the occasional Porsche Club of America gathering was not an influential element when Pennington decided to build the 5,000-square-foot brick-and-steel structure in the spring of 2008. Instead, the 45-year-old lawyer needed a place to safely and securely store his high-performance racecars and motor coach. "I’m not necessarily a collector of automobiles," he admits. "I have some very nice automobiles, but the predominant reason that I built my garage was from an investment standpoint. I did a lot of research as to where I could build a commercial building that would have a marketable value beyond what I had planned for it. I knew that at some time I’d want to liquidate it and move on to something else."

Located only three miles from his home near Columbia, S.C., the garage is Pennington’s go-to spot when he needs a moment or two away from the stress of his daily life. "I spend a lot of time after church on Sundays to watch football and relax," he says with a chuckle. "I’m spoiled, but I worked hard to get to this point. It’s one of the small rewards in life."

Beyond the garage’s role as a sanctuary, it also provides Pennington with a future real estate asset, which is why he purposely designed the redbrick exterior to look like a retail space accented by black awnings and black-tinted windows. "I tried to combine my need to invest wisely with my need to have a physical location to park my toys in life," he explains. "I could’ve stuck my money in some nondescript real estate investment or in the stock market, but I decided to combine my love and interest in automobiles and automobile racing with my desire to have a safer investment, so I’m enjoying the use of my money."

Aside from the high-end building materials and Vault-designed cabinetry, the interior of Pennington’s garage is decidedly simple, save for a few photos of his cars and framed vintage racing posters that hang on the walls. You won’t find any other memorabilia or nostalgic decor because, as Pennington explains, "I don’t like a lot of old things." The garage was designed to be functional and the cabinets are full of tools, though Pennington no longer works on his cars himself.

Even though he sees his garage as an investment, Pennington acknowledges that he likely will not make a profit if and when he chooses to sell the property. However, he’s quick to point out that value can take many forms. "If you do it right, you’ll always spend more on it than the next guy is willing to spend [to buy it]," he says. "That might be the case for me, but there’s some value that I put on the years of enjoyment [that goes] over and above what I might sell it for when I’m ready to."

Planning for the future also influenced Chad Haas’ decisions when he set out to renovate a detached one-car garage in the back of his property. As the owner of Vault, Haas set out to create a space that could showcase the type of work that his company can do as well as introduce people to the potential any garage has, regardless of its size. He also wanted to create a bold space that could attract attention yet still withstand the test of time. To accomplish that, Haas used bold color combinations—bright yellow stainless steel cabinets against a matte black wall—but he also resisted the temptation to accent the space with in-vogue materials. "One hundred years from now, when people look at a picture of that garage, I think the word timeless will come to their minds. I could’ve made it trendy; I could’ve put tread plates in there, but I caution people [who do that] because what looks good today could look awful tomorrow."

Unlike his attached garage, which holds hunting and sports equipment and is the place where he works on his cars, Haas’ detached garage is distinguished by base and crown moldings and other decorative accents. "I’m not throwing a lot of dust and dirt back there," he says, "because its main purpose is to be an entertaining and showroom space."

Haas recently added a couple of vintage gas pumps, as well as a few neon, wall-mounted signs, and he says that it’s the signs in particular that succeed in blending modern designs with antique styling. "There’s something Americana about neon—the warmth and the history," he says. "In 1930s America, every main street had neon signs that advertised local companies. Las Vegas was built on neon. That’s what made it unique."

Still, the thing that Haas says will amaze people the most about his show garage is everything that they cannot see upon first glance. "People would be surprised by just how much is stored in that garage," he says. "It looks completely clean and organized as if there’s nothing stored there, but if you take those cabinets out it would look like an absolute disaster."

Scott Blattner needed a hobby. At least, that was his wife’s opinion a few years ago. So, at her urging, the 51-year-old gave it some thought. He came to the conclusion that his passion in life is cars and he decided to build a 1,200-square-foot garage adjacent to his home near Minneapolis that would reflect that interest. However, he discovered long ago that he’s not the type to pop the hood and get his fingers greasy, so he didn’t need a real working man’s garage. "I came to the determination that I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to rebuild a car," he says. "I do my better thinking when I’m on the road, rather than sitting behind a desk, so I want something that I can just get in and drive."

To reflect that lifestyle, Blattner hired a local artist to paint pastoral road and racetrack scenes as murals on the interior of his three garage doors. Blattner also wanted an "old-world feel with modern elements," which he achieved by using stone and exposed wooden beams and by incorporating two vintage-styled gas pumps and a few neon signs designed and built by Vault. "I preferred to go with one or two high-quality pumps than to collect a number of pumps that were less interesting visually. I don’t have a lot of room in there, so I wanted to make sure that what I brought in was of a certain quality."

But Blattner also wanted to include items that he remembered from his childhood, like a Clay Smith Cams woodpecker sign and an arcade-style, bubble hockey game. "They were things that I always admired and wanted as a kid and finally could afford to buy," Blattner says of the accent pieces that now decorate his garage. "So I guess I never grew up entirely."

With an adjoining room that houses a billiard table and a large-screen television, Blattner finds that he spends plenty of time in the garage, much to his wife’s chagrin. However, he does acknowledge that his wife had a hand in its design and loves how the space turned out. "Everything that she did added to the garage and, quite frankly, I don’t know that I would’ve done quite as good a job," he says. "It’s probably nicer than I ever envisioned."

When Allen Sunderman invested the $110,000 to transform his standard, 800-square-foot garage, his rationale was simple and straightforward, though perhaps not easily understood by everyone. He initially purchased his Arizona home as an investment opportunity in 2002, but when the economy went south five and a half years later, he realized that the 5,000-square-foot, Asian-themed residence would remain his home for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, the 63-year-old decided to cut loose. "Once I realized that [the recession] was happening, I decided that maybe I would have some fun with the garage," he says, "so we went ahead and did it."

We, perhaps predictably, refers to himself and to Michael Rhodig at GarageMahals; and Sunderman says that Rhodig jumped at the challenge to create a tranquil garage that would function as an extension of the rest of the home. That home, which was built by a local real estate company in the late 1980s, was intended to be an exercise in unusual and over-the-top architecture. As Sunderman explains, the home’s design draws heavily on Asian influences and incorporates numerous variations on a circle-and-square motif. Rhodig extended that same theme into the garage through the use of copper, steel, and slate structures in between each of the three garage doors, as well as through circular and square window designs on the exterior wall. But he took it a step further by building in waterfalls that run over slate columns on either side of a bar and entertainment area centered along the back wall of the space. "He brought it to a higher level than I was even thinking," Sunderman says. "It’s really an extension of the house and it just so happens that there are cars [stored] there."

With plans to eventually move out of a single-family home and into a more practical high-rise condo full-time, Sunderman can’t foresee having such a designer garage again, but if he did, he says he most definitely would commission Rhodig for the job. In one way, he says he committed to the project at the perfect time in his life. "This was my 60th birthday present to myself," he says with a chuckle, "something that no one else was going to give me."