The Best Entertaining Homes in Paradise Valley
BY KATE LONGLEY • KATE LONGLEY DESIGNS
Paradise Valley has a kind of magic I don’t think people fully appreciate until they’ve hosted here through an entire year. Spring evenings on the patio. Summer nights when the heat finally breaks around eight, and everyone migrates outside. Those golden hour dinners with Camelback or Mummy Mountain just sitting there in the background like the world’s best backdrop.
This place basically hands you half the magic for free. The job is just not getting in its own way.
When I think about what makes a home here actually great for entertaining, a lot of it comes down to how well the house works with what Arizona is already offering.
A clear, easy connection from indoors to outdoors, so the party doesn’t have to choose one or the other.
Shade exactly where people want to linger, not just where it landed.
A kitchen that doesn’t disappear, the second everyone heads outside.
That first one is huge here in a way it isn’t everywhere. In a lot of climates, indoor and outdoor entertaining are basically two separate events. In Paradise Valley, for at least eight months of the year, they should feel like the same party. If your sliding doors are heavy, or the transition feels like a decision instead of a drift, you’re losing half the house for half the year.
The best entertaining homes here don’t treat the patio like a bonus room. They treat it like the main event.
Shade is the other one that people underestimate. Everyone wants a beautiful pergola or a gorgeous ramada, and they’re wonderful, but if it’s not actually positioned where the sun is brutal at six o’clock on a July evening, it’s decorative more than useful. I always want to know where people will want to be standing with a drink in their hand at the time they’ll be standing there.
And the kitchen. The best ones I’ve seen practically merge with the indoor kitchen, like one long continuous space that just happens to have a roof over part of it.
This valley does so much of the work for you. The best homes just know how to get out of the way and let it.
If you’re thinking about a home here, indoors or out, I’d love to talk about how to make the most of what this place already gives you for free.
KATE LONGLEY DESIGNS
Paradise Valley · Scottsdale, Arizona