Forget the Pool or Even the Living Room—‘Our Closet Time Is Precious’

A room you might not expect comes to mind when home seller Karen Haines reflects on fond memories at her Hollywood Regency-style house in Palm Springs, California: her bedroom closet.

“Forget the great room, swimming pool or hot tub. All the action in the house happens in the closet. It’s where everyone wants to be,” said Haines of the enormous space, which is decked out with white tones, mirrors, marble and gold finishes, and has double sinks with bird-shaped faucets.

Haines and her husband, Chris, are selling the house, designed by acclaimed architect Robert Marx and on the market with Douglas Elliman for $5.2 million. The couple, both entrepreneurs in the music industry, usually keep classic rock ‘n’ roll playing in the closet all day, she said.

“My daughter and I try on clothes in there, and Chris and I drink coffee in the morning and cocktails come evening,” she said.

For most homeowners, closets are merely functional—that is, a place to hold clothes, accessories and other items that they turn to for everyday wear. Some, however, are taking the coziness and intimacy of the primary suite’s walk-in closet to the next level and turning it into the home’s prized space. It’s become a place where couples can connect at the end of a hectic day or a lounge where owners socialise with friends, enjoy a morning coffee, and, yes, even imbibe with cocktails and wine.

Chris Lim, a real estate agent and former president of Christie’s International Real Estate, said that he is witnessing a redefining of the concept of walk-in closets.

“With the inclusion of features like bar sinks, lounge seating, spacious islands and glass displays and expanded vanity areas, walk-in closets now offer a retreat for morning rituals and post-day relaxation,” he said. “They’ve become hubs of activity and connection in multimillion-dollar homes.”

Part of the trend, he said, is the growing number of fashion and social media influencers, who often use their bedroom closets as their offices or filming space.

When it comes to showpiece closets, Brazilian design firm Ornare is a leading name and charges between $30,000 and close to $1 million for its services.

Claudio Faria, the CEO of Ornare Miami, said that when he opened his business in 2007, closets were an afterthought with homeowners investing their money in zhuzhing up public-facing spaces such as kitchens and family rooms. Now, he said, closets are dominating home design—his business has grown 50% annually for the last five years as a result.

“Closets have become more important because, in the way that wealthy people collect cars and art, they’re collecting clothes, and closets are the venues to show them off,” Faria said. They’re also a unique area to use in your home because of their intimacy and become talking points.”

Ana Paula Siebert Justus is a client and tapped Ornare to bring her vision of a glamorous closet to life. Justus, a fashion influencer, and her husband, Roberto Justus, an entrepreneur, own a five-bedroom condominium in Sunny Isles, Florida. The large wardrobe in their bedroom is awash in green hues, wood and leather. Backlighting features throughout, and there are sections for handbags and clothes plus a hat rack and a vanity with a chair.

“I spend a lot of time in my closet shooting content, so it needs to be in photograph-ready shape,” she said. “It has no door, and one of my favorite ways to connect with Roberto is to catch up as I’m getting dressed for the day or evening events. Our closet time is precious.”

Tina Trahan, a philanthropist and art collector, lives in Los Angeles’s Studio City neighbourhood in a 5,100-square-foot home that was the exterior for the home on “The Brady Bunch” TV series. She shared similar sentiments about her closet. She has repurposed one of the bedrooms into the space and has outfitted it with double-height rolling racks, a three-way mirror, a sofa, a Miele coffee machine and a fridge stocked with drinks including White Claws—her beverage of choice.

Trahan said that she frequently entertains girlfriends, and they love heading to her closet to drink tequila and wine and catch up.

“We end up ordering sushi and eating it there. My closet is 100% our favourite place to hang out,” she said.

Other examples of these double-duty flashy closets abound.

Real estate agent Katrina Barrett of Christie’s International Real Estate Walt Danley | Local Luxury is overseeing the marketing and sale of a $40 million home in Paradise Valley, Arizona. The centrepiece of its primary suite is an expansive closet with seating, a steaming area, hidden panels to store valuables and a secret door leading to a sports barn with a pickleball court and golf simulator.

In another example, Susan Archer is selling her home in Issaquah, Washington, near Seattle, for more than $6 million through Windermere Real Estate/Luxury Portfolio International. She described the property’s primary bedroom’s closet as “a haven for creating memorable moments with friends and family.”

The white-painted space has marble and cream walls and features backlighting, a display case that’s common in upscale boutiques, a washer and dryer, a wet bar, an island and seating.

“Many of my girlfriends and I have gathered around the island, their excitement palpable as they admire my collection. With champagne flutes in hand, the atmosphere is lively and carefree,” Archer said. “Beyond the soirées with friends, my closet holds a special place for precious moments with my daughter. As she grows, her interest in fashion blossoms, and my closet becomes a treasure trove of inspiration for her budding style.”

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is set to make its stock-market debut Friday in the largest IPO ever—and perhaps the most closely watched. The company sold an outsized portion of the offering to individuals. Its performance on Friday will be a crucial gauge of investor appetite for mega-offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic expected later this year.

The rocket maker, which derives most of its revenue from its satellite internet unit and has a nascent artificial-intelligence business, will trade under the ticker “SPCX.” It sold 555.6 million shares at $135 each, raising about $75 billion in a deal that valued the company at roughly $1.77 trillion.

When will shares open for trading?

SpaceX executives are set to ring the Nasdaq’s opening bell in New York, but shares in buzzy initial public offerings don’t tend to start trading until later in the day.

Bankers leading an IPO typically want to match buyers and sellers for about 10% of the shares sold before opening trading to lessen volatility. For SpaceX, that would be about 55 million shares, or roughly $7.5 billion worth.

Because pre-IPO investors are restricted from selling shares for a while, it can take time to find willing sellers among those who bought shares in a high-demand IPO.

Shares of Alibaba , the largest U.S. IPO until SpaceX, opened for trading a little before noon in its 2014 offering. Last year, one of the highest-profile offerings was that of software maker Figma , whose shares started trading just before 2 p.m.

It is possible that SpaceX’s bankers will decide to start trading without matching the typical portion of orders to ensure the shares have several hours of trading on their first day, people familiar with the matter say.

How volatile will the stock be?

Bankers and traders expect SpaceX’s share price could be volatile in initial trading, thanks in part to the large portion of its shares expected to be held by individual investors. Some who anticipate individuals will rush into the shares worry they could just as easily get spooked and rush out.

Any sharp movement in stock price could trigger so-called circuit breakers that could pause trading. For most newly listed companies, a 10% swing in either direction prompts a five-minute pause. Companies that had their shares halted include Figma and Cerebras Systems , the chip company whose shares soared in its May debut.

These forced timeouts applied to single stocks came after the so-called flash crash in 2010, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 700 points in eight minutes before recouping much of the loss.

What is all the talk about the ‘green-shoe’ option?

If the stock starts trading erratically, bankers have a secret weapon to attempt to calm things down.

Underwriters typically sell more shares to investors than an IPO’s total offer size, colloquially called the green shoe. In SpaceX’s case, they sold about 15% more shares than the stated offering size.

Because this means they technically allocated more than the offering amount, the so-called stabilisation agent, in this case, Morgan Stanley , needs to buy back the excess number of shares to deliver them. If the stock starts to fall, the bank will buy the shares in the open market, which helps buoy the stock price. If the stock isn’t faltering, the stabilisation agent can buy the additional shares they need to deliver to investors directly from the company.

The term “green shoe” comes from the first company to employ a version of this method years ago, a shoemaker that was a predecessor to Stride Rite. When Meta Platforms , then known as Facebook, went public in 2012, its shares started dropping and its bankers stepped in to buy more shares.

How will Elon Musk’s take-it-or-leave-it pricing fare?

Like all things Musk, SpaceX’s IPO bucked the norms. Instead of approaching prospective investors with a possible price range for shares ahead of the IPO and incorporating their feedback, the company set an exact share price from the beginning: $135.

The idea was to limit drama for what is already the biggest IPO of all time. It did, however, remove what many see as an important step along the way: price discovery. The success of this approach will partly be judged by how SpaceX’s shares trade Friday. If the stock surges, critics will say SpaceX left money on the table by not pricing shares higher. If the stock falls or trades flat, there will likely be critiques that SpaceX and its advisers overestimated demand.

Will the machinery hold up—and what will be the wider market impact?

The sheer size of SpaceX’s IPO will test the trading infrastructure at Nasdaq and could have ripple effects in the broader market.

Nasdaq has practiced with mock openings to make sure its trading platform is prepared. When Facebook went public, some investors who tried to change or cancel orders ahead of trading didn’t get confirmations because of a technology malfunction. The confusion contributed to Facebook shares dropping on the first day of trading. They didn’t return back above their IPO price for more than a year.

Meanwhile, some market watchers expect added activity Friday in stocks that individual investors might sell to buy SpaceX shares, such as those of technology companies and Musk’s electric-car maker Tesla . Such sales already appeared to be under way earlier in the week, when individual investors dumped single-stock holdings on a net basis for two days in a row, according to Vanda Research. (To be sure, those sales came on days that were poor showings for tech stocks broadly.)

It will take several days for SpaceX shares to show up in any major index funds , so the offering’s wider impact on the market could play out over the next several weeks or longer.