Redefining the House of the Future : Design: O.C. creators of New Home 2000 hope their ‘rooms without boundaries’ will spark ideas at Bay Area expo.

Step into the house of the future, please--and be sure to wipe your feet first.

Living rooms, dens and dining rooms are relics of the past. Instead you will see a Sunday room, home theater, dream room, home office command center, nook and exercise room.

This dwelling of the next century is based on the predictions of a team of companies, most of them based in Orange County. Their creation, New Home 2000, will be on display beginning Thursday at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference in San Francisco.

While homes of the future will still include such necessities as areas for sleeping, eating and bathing, the focus will be on “rooms without boundaries,” meaning the use of rooms won’t be defined as specifically as in the past, said Carole Eichen, president of Carole Eichen Interiors Inc. of Santa Ana, who designed the house.

“There should be a difference in how we design homes now than how we did it five years ago. Everyone wants their own space now,” Eichen said. “The public doesn’t want to live with so much formality. They want indoor-outdoor, relaxed life space. They have so much in their lives that is pressure-filled, they want a place where they can find peace of mind.”

Homes will be versatile, comfortable and convenient--with a big emphasis on convenient. The latest in high-tech equipment will control skylights and monitor air quality, lighting and security, the design team predicts.

“Nobody wanted to do a house without a living room, but I said that’s what people want,” Eichen said. “Let’s get rid of the space that’s not being used and put it into things like the spa or the Sunday room.”

In development for more than two years, New Home 2000 is not an actual house but a collection of nine rooms on display at the Moscone Center, where an estimated 8,000 builders and designers are expected to attend the conference.

The design team includes architect Danielian Associates of Irvine, landscape architect Land Concern of Santa Ana, Birtcher Construction of Laguna Niguel, and Eichen’s firm. The contractor was GV Contractors Inc. of Windsor, Calif.

“For the last 30 years, Orange County has been the showcase for new residential development,” said Art Danielian, architect for the house. “The competition is very keen down here.”

“We have to change our homes to accommodate the fast-changing pace of today’s families,” Danielian said. “We’re trying to look at ways to unwind the person who is working all day. That’s why we included friendlier spaces like the Sunday room, basically a solarium--an individual, private space where someone can unwind.”

If the home of the future were to be built now, Danielian said, it would cost more than $400,000. But actually constructing clones of it is not the purpose, he said. The idea is to spark ideas among builders and developers.

“We’re not saying, ‘Take this house and copy it,’ ” he said. “It’s an idea place.”