A Home That Pays Tribute to the Night Sky

A mountain retreat with a professional observatory

January 20, 2016

Vanessa Childers,

Views of Breckenridge, Colorado’s spectacular Ten Mile Range aren’t the only sights to be seen from this unique contemporary home—“The Highlands at Breckenridge” also zooms in on its homeowners’ love for global influences and astronomy, complete with a professional-grade observatory silo.

The 5,341-square-foot, 2-bedroom, 3.5-bath mountain retreat also includes a fitness room, a spa bathroom with steam shower, an oversized RV garage bay, a commercial dog-washing station, a glass-door elevator, and 19-foot indoor endless pool (above which hovers a 500-fiber-optic-star ceiling, keeping in line with the astronomy theme).

The home’s design was born of its owners’ wish to blur the lines between the indoors and outdoors (and beyond!). Architect BHH Partners and builder Pinnacle Mountain Homes brought that vision to life.

The architecture and exterior incorporate stone and mortar to give the illusion that the walls are hundreds of years old. The interior design palette is borrowed from its natural surroundings, with the use of gray, white, taupe and blue. And expansive glass windows, as well as large west-facing decks, invite the gorgeous mountain landscapes to double as walls of art.

European influences are scattered throughout the home: Austrian oiled-oak floors, imported kitchen cabinets, European turn-and-tilt windows, an Italian alternating-step staircase, just to name a few.

The observatory dome rotates 360 degrees, allowing the 17-inch Plane Wave research-grade telescope to capture the night sky in all its glory. And many of the observatory’s design features are echoed elsewhere—curved bathroom walls and cabinets, barrel-vaulted beams, curved deck, curved standing-seam metal roofing, and a hand-made curved bookshelf to store every issue since 1954 of Sky and Telescope magazine.

Take a look below!