Crafted Desert Dream

‘Best Design Meets Technology’ winner showcases a truly responsive home designed for any kind of day

introduction

Built as a high-end speculative home in Phoenix, Arizona, this 5,200-square-foot home demonstrates how luxury design and advanced technology can work in harmony. Its striking exterior combines smooth stucco, limestone-style accents, layered rooflines, and expansive, black-framed windows, creating a timeless yet contemporary aesthetic.

Case Study: Desert Cove

the challenge

Unlike a custom home built around a specific client's needs, Desert Cove was designed to demonstrate the advantages of integrated technology to future homeowners seeing the property for the first time. The residence blends sophisticated architecture, custom interior design, and extensive automation, featuring a dedicated movie theater, expansive indoor and outdoor entertainment spaces, and whole-home control.

the solution

Building on a successful partnership with Keller Crafted Homes, My Smart Manor was selected to bring a cohesive technology vision to life. “We set out to create a unified living experience that would show buyers the benefits of technology while staying discreet within the home’s refined architecture and curated interiors,” says Kevin Keller, owner and general contractor, Keller Crafted Homes. “Even without knowing the future homeowner, we wanted the home to feel personal, so we designed the automation around common routines and lifestyles to make the experience feel natural from their first experience.” Crestron was chosen for its ability to bring lighting, shading, entertainment, and outdoor amenities together under one intuitive platform while providing flexibility to evolve with the lifestyles of future homeowners. My Smart Manor created a custom home-wide demonstration that showcased how seamlessly the technology enhanced everyday living to help prospective buyers experience the benefits firsthand.

Case Study: KPMG
Case Study: KPMG
Case Study: KPMG
 
“When prospective buyers walked into the home, Crestron technology brought the property to life. Lighting changes, shades move, fireplaces ignite, and audio fills the space, creating an experience that's impossible to replicate with a traditional home tour.”
Jason Brunen
Owner,
My Smart Manor

the technology

The team carefully evaluated how potential residents would interact with the home throughout their daily routines, from arriving with groceries and preparing meals to entertaining guests by the pool or navigating the house at night, ensuring every lighting scene, keypad layout, and automation routine felt intuitive from day one. The most distinctive feature is a custom Crestron-powered demonstration mode created specifically for real estate showings. When authorized visitors enter, the home automatically launches a choreographed experience featuring a voice-guided tour, activated lighting scenes, motorized shades, fireplaces, pool and spa features, water elements, distributed audio, and even theater demonstrations, showcasing the full value of integrated technology.

The Crestron Home® platform serves as the foundation for control and automation across the Desert Cove property, unifying lighting, shading, audio, entertainment, pool and fireplace controls, and outdoor features within a single, intuitive ecosystem. Crestron touch screens are placed throughout the home to provide easy access to scenes and system settings, while elegantly designed Crestron Horizon® keypads offer streamlined wall-mounted control without the clutter of traditional switches. These interfaces enable prospective homeowners to effortlessly manage the home's features from a consistent and user-friendly platform.

Case Study: KPMG
Case Study: KPMG

Lighting and shading played a central role in enhancing both the architecture and everyday living experience at Desert Cove. Leveraging Crestron lighting, the team was able to preserve the clean sightlines and refined aesthetic that complement the home's neutral palette of natural stone, warm wood tones, and open spaces. Crestron motorized shades work in tandem with the residence's floor-to-ceiling glass and large sliding glass walls, automatically managing daylight and comfort while maintaining uninterrupted views of the surrounding landscape. The system is especially impactful in the living room, where automated lighting highlights the soaring vaulted ceilings and exposed wood beams.

Crestron DM NAX® Audio-over-IP technology powers whole-home audio, distributing high-quality sound across the residence and its outdoor entertaining areas. The covered patio, designed as a natural extension of the living room, reinforces the home's resort-like atmosphere and encourages year-round indoor-outdoor living. A dedicated home theater serves as one of the property's premier entertainment destinations, but the experience begins well before the movie starts. Before entering the theater, the scene already begins to set as occupancy sensors trigger an automated sequence that gradually illuminates the translucent granite backlit stairway and adjusts the surrounding ambiance. Additional modes activate theater lighting and entertainment settings, transforming a simple walk to the theater into a cinematic experience of its own.

 
“Home automation was treated as an extension of the design process. Rather than viewing technology as a separate system that would be added after construction, the team incorporated automation into the overall vision for how the home would look, feel, and respond to everyday living.”
Nicole Keller
Owner and Designer,
Keller Crafted Homes

the results

Crestron transformed Desert Cove into a connected living experience that demonstrates how advanced technology and architectural design can work together to elevate everyday living. The custom demonstration revealed the true versatility of the Crestron system, guiding prospective buyers through real-world scenarios that helped them envision how the home could enhance their daily lives.

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featured products

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Crestron Home®

Crestron Home makes all the devices and systems work the way you want them to. One simple experience from multiple control devices – on the wall, on the counter, on the couch, on your phone.

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Crestron DM NAX Audio-over-IP technology

Send high-fidelity sound from any source to any space. Every note. In no time flat. It’s done with DM NAX Audio-over-IP technology. From video conferencing to background music, networked audio distribution gives you a flexible, scalable, and secure solution.

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Horizon® Keypads and Dimmers

Experience a new sensation in home control. Horizon keypads and dimmers deliver a pleasing tactile response with each button press, combined with sophisticated contemporary design and advanced functionality to elevate your lifestyle and accentuate your décor.

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