Furniture designer Pat Carson created a plethora of custom fixtures for this guest room, including a riveted aluminum Murphy bed. The best Murphy beds raise and lower easily, often requiring only one hand. This unique wall bed employs a hand-cranked wheel-and-pulley system.

Two San Francisco art and travel addicts overhauled a loft—and customized a pair of shipping containers—to accommodate their collection and reflect their passions.

In the guest bathroom, Givone installed a hand-chiseled sink made of 17th-century marble quarried from the hills outside of Rome.

The Miconos Floor Lamp, designed by Ernesto Gismondi for Artemide, is a floor luminaire that provides diffused incandescent lighting. The orb diffuser is made of transparent hand-blown glass and the handle is accented by a chrome-plated steel handle. This lamp is 15% off until October 22, 2015.

“The old living room and balcony on the sixth floor were transformed into the master bedroom with an en-suite open bathroom,” Hammer said. Flos lighting illuminates the space above the vanity.

Angela Brooks and son Calder revel in the benefits of free solar energy, cheerfully opening the living room’s big glass doors when it’s time to play.

Power Pod Convenience and functionality blend into elegant design with Coalesse’s PowerPod. Designed by Scott Wilson and MINIMAL, PowerPod delivers two functions in one. When needed, the PowerPod houses six power outlets with built-in surge-suppression. When not needed, the outlet is converted to a sleek pencil organizer and accessory tray. Energy-saving on/off switch reduces vampire power consumption.

You turn the lamp on with a strangely low-tech button embedded in the fabric-covered power cord. Tap it up to three times to intensify the brightness, and turn it off with the fourth touch.

Vila D’Acosta-Calheiros hung a space-saving wall shelf in the library. The table is by Eero Saarinen; the Tolomeo lamp is by Michele de Lucchi for Artemide. The red beanbag-like Sacco chair is by Zanotta, as is the Sciangai coatrack in the hall, beyond.

The Eclipse is mounted on a clear foot that houses a black power cord, which adds to the appearance that it is floating.

In the master bedroom, a Droog Milk Bottle lamp hangs next to a Fluttua Bed designed by Daniele Lago. An artwork by Brooke Westlund hangs over a custom pet door for the client’s dog, Kona.

A black side table rests outside the bedroom hallway.

“At first we thought we might not need that much space, but then we started thinking long term. We look at this house as the home of our lifetime.” —Guido Chiavelli

Keep the Home Fires Burning Using wood for heat and energy keeps the Wadhams’ environmental footprint small and helps avoid the use of coal- or nuclear-powered electricity. Come winter, the couple relies on an Esse wood-burning stove for cooking, heating, and feeding a set of small radiators. In summer, they use the stove’s electric component, which is powered by solar energy.

Arbel’s projects—both products and architectural commissions—follow a chronological numbering system. The house itself is his 23rd design, while the one-of-a-kind glass pendants that accent nearly every room like a starscape are called “28.”

On the hill behind the house, a wind-powered well brings water from a 150-foot-deep hole to the surface. That water then flows to the home as needed with gravity's helping hand.

Brammy and Kyprianou hung Koura pendant lights by New Zealand designer David Trubridge above the dining area. Their organic forms and diamond-shaped shadows create intimacy in the vast space. Among Bilardo’s contributions were the black tulipwood cabinetry and ceiling and the cantilevered concrete countertop that appears to go through the glass wall.

Designer Christiane Hogner, Bruxelles

TERRACOTTA PENDANTS Tactile and organic, these handmade pendants combine kiln-fired terra-cotta with a shiny, white porcelain glaze.

For the dining room, Freeman and Feldmann swapped their tiny table for developer John Walker's larger one since he was moving into a smaller space. They topped it with a $12 pendant lamp from Ikea and finished the "room" with a counsel from West Elm.

Mays chose Graham & Brown’s Verve Stripe wallpaper for the downstairs bedroom. The chrome lamp is vintage.

A vintage lamp and George Nelson’s Marshmallow sofa and Spool clock embody the mid-century feel of Soheil and Nima Nakhshab’s design for a California family home.

The living room is populated with a molded plywood Eames chair and a vintage Italian lamp.

We have been fans of Brooklyn-based Workstead for years, and we wouldn’t turn down their wall lamp (or any of their lamps) if it wanted to stay at our place. $475

In the Spotlight“I’m a huge proponent of lighting as architecture,” says Nix, who suggests illuminating objects instead of empty space. “Light on an object creates ambiance.” In their apartment, they’ve trained track lights from the Polish company LightArt on the Cube, as well as on the handmade cabinetry. The fixtures, which Novak-Zemplinski describes as “good quality and inexpensive in comparison to more well-known brands,” are also installed at the MoMA in New York. lightart.pl Practical DecorationOne of the secrets to living neatly in a small apartment, says Nix, is lots of storage space. To that end, the couple built big cabinets along the walls. To create a sense of visual unity throughout the eclectic but compact space, the couple hand-carved the tree pattern from the kitchen into these cabinet doors (from a template) using an electric router. It’s more than ornament: The cutouts eliminate the need for jutting cabinet pulls. biolinia.com

More prized possessions that made the cut: A George Nelson Half-Nelson lamp sits atop an Alexander Girard bedside table.

Anglepoise’s Original 1227 was launched in 1934, and is considered the archetypal lamp from the British company. The lamp took off where other contemporary task lamps left off, using a newly developed constant spring technology to create a lamp that was extremely flexible and adjustable, while also maintaining a consistent balance and stability.

Pulpites Lamps Made from shredded and recycled cardboard but fashioned like a piece of wet clay, the Pulpites lamp serves as an object lesson in paper’s potential to not only record ideas, but also to become the raw material of good design. Photos courtesy of Dear Human.

Power House High This structural reboot of a former power plant now has a much different purpose. Another post-industrial, LEED Platinum-certified showpiece, this century-old structure, which once housed rows of massive coal burners that provided all the power for Sears, Roebuck & Company's 55-acre corporate headquarters (as well as the air pressure for the pnuematic mail tubes), now boasts a pair of charter schools.

"When you buy something from us, I want you to keep it forever, because that's how long it's going to last."

The brainchild of Cincinnati-born and Brooklyn-based designer Paul Loebach, Areaware's Shanty Lamp ($75) is crafted from pine and references "Shinto temples and humble wooden cabins." We think it's more the latter than the former, and love that it has a scrappy sensibility and affordable price tag. More a showpiece than a streaming light source, the table lamp illuminates with a five-watt bulb.

The Wobbelhead Lamp A stack of gently swaying organic curves, this lamp prototype by Norwegian designers Morten & Jonas is held to a table b a small magnet hidden underneath. Photo provided by Morten & Jonas

Pulpites Lamps The Dear Human studio shares a building with a garment factory, so when the duo began playing with paper, there were plenty of cardboard dress forms and packaging material to use. Pulping, molding and shaping the geometric molds resembled creating with clay; they even dry the finished product in a computer-controlled industrial kiln. Photo courtesy of Dear Human.

Canasto Lamp by José Roberto Paredes (2013) Another Carrot Concept piece, the flexible lamp, which can be easily moved from desk to side table with its wooden handle, derives its silhouette from traditional woven baskets.

In true mid-century fashion, a George Nelson Bubble Lamp is paired with an Eames Lounge by Charles and Ray Eames in a corner of the living room. The glass walls and mitered corner are original features of architect Saul Zaik’s 1956 design.

Lara's home office consists of a MacBook Air and Ferruccio Laviani Abat-Jour lamp for Kartell.