A Gulf Coast city with its own school of architecture
Sarasota sits on Sarasota Bay on Florida’s Gulf Coast, the county seat of Sarasota County, with about 55,000 residents in the 2020 census. The city limits reach across the bay onto barrier islands: Lido Key, St. Armands Key, Bird Key and the northern part of Siesta Key. On the mainland there is a historic downtown, the Laurel Park historic district and the Rosemary District, which was historically an African American neighborhood.
What sets Sarasota’s houses apart is architecture. Between about 1941 and 1966 a group of architects led by Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph developed what became known as the Sarasota School: a regional version of mid-century modernism with open plans and large areas of glass, adapted to a subtropical climate. Rudolph’s 1953 Umbrella House in Lido Shores was built as the show home for that neighborhood. The city still celebrates that legacy, for example with the SarasotaMOD festival and its tours of Lido Shores houses.
Walls that suit a modern house
That history affects what people here ask for. In a house built around glass and clean lines, picture-frame molding can look borrowed from somewhere else. Large-format porcelain slabs, plain wood slats and long, low built-ins tend to belong. And where a room is tall, a wall that stops at eight feet can look unfinished, so we plan where the design should end.
Sarasota is where we have done our most ambitious work. In July 2026 we finished a double-height porcelain slab media wall here, which is our flagship project. It took about ten days and had a budget of about $30,000. Earlier in the year we built a media wall with built-ins and a tray ceiling detail (April, about $14,000) and a black media wall with a fireplace (May, about $4,500), and in August a wood slat wall with an arched mirror niche (about $7,500).
Humidity, salt and a long drive
Two practical points come with working on the Gulf. The first is moisture. Wood takes on and gives up moisture with the humidity around it, so we let materials acclimate inside the air-conditioned house before installation. Close to the water, salt in the air is hard on bare steel, so stainless or coated fasteners and hardware are the safer choice. None of this requires exotic materials; it just requires paying attention.
The second is distance. Sarasota is about two to two and a half hours from downtown Orlando, and we don’t charge a trip fee for that. The first step doesn’t need a visit at all: send a photo of the wall and you’ll have a price range the same day, and we schedule the measurement when it suits you.
