For his 45th birthday party,Rick Wilson and his wife Stephanie hosted a party at a nightclub. Their 50 or so guests danced under a disco ball with laser lights, while some took to the stage to sing karaoke that blasted out of a 10,000 watt P.A. system under stage lights. For breaks, they retired to tables near the 20-foot long bar.
The club? It is in the basement of the Wilsons’ 11,000-square-foot Prospect, Ky. home. The 3,000-square-foot space was designed “to look like a sports club-nightclub-entertainment area,” Mr. Wilson, 47, said. The Internet entrepreneur, who fronted a rock band for five years in the 1990s, spent about $500,000 on the club space, estimated his designer, David Lutes, owner of Stonecroft Homes in Louisville.
Home theaters, elaborate bars and indoor-outdoor lounge areas have become common in luxury homes. But the in-home nightclub takes the concept of entertaining at home a step further, creating spaces with light, video and sound systems that rival clubs downtown.
It is gotten easier to design such spaces with top-notch audio and video elements because of a recent boom in customizable products, said Jon Robbins, executive director of Home Technology Specialists of America, a Chicago-based trade group. His members have embedded a video screen into a bar top, integrated speakers encased in custom-made wooden frames that match the wood finish in the room and installed “ultra-high-definition” video screens in homes, Mr. Robbins said. Prices for the highest quality video have dropped by 25% to 40% in the last two years.
Yet building an impressive home nightclub is still complex enough to broadcast exclusivity.
Among the most exclusive nightclubs in the world may well be those in homes belonging to Paris Hilton, the hotel heiress and reality television personality. She has built nightclubs in two of her previous houses, and has one in her current Beverly Hills residence, which she created after buying the home in 2007.
“It used to be a children’s playroom before I made it in to the ultimate adult playroom. I wanted it to look like a club in Paris,” said Ms. Hilton, 34. The black-and-gold room has “the most high-tech Bose sound system, bar, DJ booth, dance pole, laser, light and smoke system,” she said. It cost over $500,000 to build, according to people familiar with its construction.
In November, Ms. Hilton hosted a “coming home” party for herself after extensive travel. Performer Marilyn Manson, singer Rita Ora, and actress Bella Thorne were guests, she said. For her birthday in February, rapper Lil Wayne performed his entire album in the space, Ms. Hilton said.
Ms. Hilton, who works as a DJ at clubs in Ibiza, St. Tropez, Las Vegas and New York, has 50 Paris Hilton retail stores around the world, and is known for her global partying, said she enjoys entertaining at her own club because “I get to control who is there.”
“Snoop Dogg, Hugh Hefner and everyone in L.A. loves coming to Club Paris. Everyone has privacy,” Ms. Hilton said.
Neighbors, of course, may be somewhat less fond of the thumping back beat that typifies modern dance music. Putting the nightclub in the basement is one common noise mitigation tactic. Dense insulation is another approach: Mr. Wilson’s nightclub walls are made of double drywall with an air gap in between them; the floors are foam insulated, said Mr. Lutes.
Noise mitigation doesn’t necessarily result in noise elimination. “We have one set of neighbors who can’t stand us,” admitted Claire Farrow, who has a nightclub in her London home.
Ms. Farrow and her husband Ian Hogarth, director and architect at Hogarth Architects respectively, built what they call “the disco” in the basement of the 2,800-square-foot house they built in Kensington/Chelsea four years ago. Ms. Farrow is unsure how much of the $1.73 million the family invested in the home went into the disco.
The 150-square-foot space satisfied the dreams of several family members, said Ms. Farrow, 46. She, who loves to dance, got a $8,600 video dance floor that displays “ridiculous hallucinogenic images.” The couple’s 20-year-old son Gil, a budding music industry manager, got the D.J. booth he craved.
In November, the family hosted the “Hogarth Sound Clash,” a party for about 120 guests that celebrated multiple family birthdays. They hired five DJs who played grime (a British version of hip-hop), hip-hop, soul and funk according to each family members’ tastes. The party went until about midnight, when someone from the “city council,” or local government, rang the bell and instructed the family to turn the music down, which they promptly did, Ms. Farrow said.
Not all neighbors are bitter, Ms. Farrow said: Two have asked the couple to build them basement nightclubs, which they are currently working on.
When it comes to resale, a nightclub downstairs poses another set of issues. In Charlotte, N.C., Randy Watson, an agent at HM Properties, is marketing a 13,500-square-foot golf course home for $3.7 million.
The home includes a 1,000-square-foot dance area with an octagonal dance floor, an octagonal light truss that matches the floor, 12-foot ceilings, bench seating around the room and a DJ booth with a Meyer Sound audio system. The nightclub sits within a 2,000-square-foot entertainment wing with a bar, 9-foot billiard table, card table, videogame room and home theater.
The house has been on the market for six years, having started at $4.5 million, according to real estate website Realtor.com. Part of the problem: “When we take people through this house, it intimidates the buyer,” Mr. Watson said. Some fear that state-of-the-art technology will become outdated, and others worry the club could become a magnet for local teenagers, Mr. Watson said.
A private nightclub hasn’t inspired anyone to jump on a 52,000-square-foot house in Farmington, Conn., once owned by boxer Mike Tyson and purchased by rapper 50 Cent, aka Curtis James Jackson, for $4.1 million in 2003. Mr. Jackson first put the 19-bedroom, 39-bathroom mansion on the market in 2007 for $18.5 million. It is currently listed for $8.5 million.
The club was originally built by Mr. Tyson, but “50 completely renovated it and added all new features and sound systems,” said Jennifer Leahy, listing agent at Douglas Elliman. The club includes an illuminated dance floor, professional sound system, DJ booth, recording studio and an attached casino. Mr. Jackson “recently held a party there for his EFFEN Vodka,” Ms. Leahy said.
The nightclub isn't a liability, Ms. Leahy said. Finished basements are always an asset in a home, and special entertaining spaces are a must-have in luxury homes, she said. Mr. Jackson’s representatives didn't respond to requests for an interview.
Capturing the cool of a commercial nightclub can be hard in part because the club scene is constantly changing. Most nightclubs only stay in business for three years; if they last longer, they need a design overhaul every five or six years to stay current, said Tom Telesco, a Miami-based architect who has been designing nightclubs for 25 years.
Today, fashionable nightclubs feature hydraulically-lifted stages and machinery that blasts a cooling stream of nitrogen onto the dance floor, said Dennis DeGori, owner of E11Even in Miami. In his 25,000-square-foot, $40 million club, which opened in 2014, plush leather seating provides a view onto shows, go-go dancers and laser lights on a stage that lifts up and down. The space was designed to provide constant visual and audio stimulation.
“You can’t expect people to entertain themselves,” Mr. DeGori said.
Write to Katy McLaughlin at katy.mclaughlin@wsj.com
This article originally appeared on The Wall Street Journal.