Most of Mark Schomisch's glass-walled house is so flooded with light that wearing sunglasses inside is almost necessary. Step into his kitchen, however, and night-vision goggles might be the eyewear of choice. It's dark with slick, black-tiled walls, black marble countertops, oak cabinets stained deep graphite and dusky lights.

"I wanted the kitchen to be an oasis from the brightness," says the interior designer who remodeled his 1970s French-style house in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles into a skylight-laden contemporary with views from the Sunset Strip to the ocean. Since he wanted to tear out convention along with the home's faux mansard roof, he thought, why not tuck the kitchen next to a shaded side yard and make it as dim as a movie theater? "You could show a film in here," he adds.

There's a lot more drama in kitchens these days as they continue to take center stage in the home. Some don't even look much like kitchens. Sinks and cooktops are concealed beneath sliding steel. Trash compactors and other practical-but-notpretty elements are hidden in niches behind floor-to-ceiling paneled doors. "Sub rooms," separate small areas off the kitchen, hold walk-in refrigerators; "dirty rooms" keep oil-splattering tasks contained and out of sight. Make a mess, close the doors, and the showcase kitchen remains uncluttered and tidy.

Kitchens are getting bigger and are being used more often as the place to entertain, says Ed Pell, market research chief for the National Kitchen & Bath Association, who said consumers spent $127 billion in 2006 on kitchen remodels. "Cooking has become as much a hobby as a necessity," he says. "A lot of people now do gourmet cooking, or think they do, and they want to show off."

And if one kitchen doesn't seem to be enough, are seven too many?

Newport Beach, Calif., designer Laurie Haefele installed two full-size kitchens and five kitchenettes with a sink, fridge and microwave throughout her client's Bel-Air estate on the west side of Los Angeles. There's a cozy family kitchen for the owner and her young daughter to make cookies right next to a souped-up kitchen with restaurant-size appliances for the live-in chef. But when guests are invited, Haefele says, everyone eventually winds up in the family kitchen.

Status kitchens, no longer just a place to rattle pots and pans, sport nontraditional colors on walls, doors, cabinetry and countertops. A steel island with glossy electric-blue pearwood panels anchors a new kitchen designed by Geoffrey Frost of Downsview Kitchen Studio of Los Angeles. Frost considers backsplashes another place to add bold colors. He used bright red quartz in a San Fernando Valley home in Los Angeles and tiny mosaic tiles in gray, blue, mauve and pearly tones in a Beverly Hills kitchen where the residents display their folk art collection.

When Schomisch bought his Hollywood Hills house in 2005, it had a French bistro-type kitchen with hand-painted ceramic tiles and a brick fireplace. That's all gone, and now the centerpiece is an island with a 6-inch-thick, seamless slab of St. Laurent marble.

Schomisch first saw midnight-colored marble like it in a New York hotel. He bought enough — at $75 a square foot — to crown the island and countertops, and found less-expensive look-alike tiles to cover the walls.

The telltale signs of a kitchen are hard to find here. Tall doors hide a second sink and bar glasses. A glass-front Viking refrigerator, triple-temperature Viking wine cooler and Miele double oven and warming drawer are lined up on both sides of the entrance so they aren't noticeable right away.

Cabinets are underneath the countertops, not above them. "It's frighteningly functional," he says. When he's entertaining, he says, the mood shifts in a few steps, from a sunning-around-the-pool attitude outside to mellow romance inside the kitchen.

"The color of the kitchen sets the stage for elegance, whether you're having a cocktail or eating your cereal," Schomisch says. "There's something warm about the dark."