Large-screen TVs, laptop computers, cell phones and homeowners desiring ambience, innovative styling and smart storage solutions are clearly driving furniture design.

Furniture makers have been challenged to create pieces that meet the desires of the sophisticated, savvy homeowner, and clearly they have managed to deliver with furniture that makes being organized hip and simple without sacrificing style.

At the spring High Point Market, which ended Sunday, multifunctional furniture pieces were as plentiful as the shuttles carrying the thousands of interior designers, buyers and reporters to and from the world's largest exhibition of residential furnishings.

For example, Classic Flame featured The Paramount, a fireplace with a built-in, multifunction media cabinet with integrated wire management channels; Riverside debuted its laptop cocktail table with storage space for files, a printer or scanner; and Hooker introduced the Smart Hutch, a stylish piece that offers charging stations for electronic devices and lots of cubby holes for storage.

"I'm calling this the market of the cubby," said Kim Shaver, vice president of marketing with Hooker. "We love the convenience of connectivity, but it does create clutter. There is a need for lots of cubbies."

The Smart Hutch, which is part of the company's Danforth L-shaped home office, offers a communications central headquarters and charging stations for electronic devices, such as cell phones, BlackBerrys and MP3 players. The piece features a pair of interchangeable box drawers with false fronts. Hidden inside one drawer are four top electrical outlets and two bottom outlets with power charging stations for storing cell phones, digital cameras and other gadgets. Another drawer features felt lining, which would be ideal for jewelry storage. The piece retails for about $600.

Riverside's laptop cocktail table, available in four finishes, is unlike any other cocktail table currently on the market. It looks like a basic coffee table with simple styling, but manipulate its bells and whistles and you soon discover the piece doubles as a workspace ideal for the home computer worker.

The piece features multiple extras, including storage space for files, a printer or scanner. Half of its top slides forward to act as a desktop surface for working on a laptop, which can be connected to a power port below the tabletop.

"I see people with smaller apartments or homes who don't have a designated area using this piece," said Linda Owens, vice president of national accounts and marketing with Riverside.

Once computering is complete, homeowners seek relaxation, whether alone or with friends. And often, they turn to sharing a bottle of wine between friends. According to the Wine Market Council, wine consumption is at an all-time high. The council attributes the surge to the Generation Y, or the Echo Boom, who appears to have embraced wine consumption much like their baby boomer parents who are drinking wine for its health benefits. As a result, manufacturers have responded with stylish wine and bar cabinets, making it one of the fastest-growing types of furniture in today's market, according to Shaver of Hooker.

At Hooker, wine cabinetry selections have risen from zero to more than 20 items in the last few years. During this spring market, the furniture company introduced its Ultimate Bar Cabinet, a functional piece that exudes high styling.

"It's all about function," said Mike Spece, executive vice president of merchandising, in a news release about the new piece. "The two-door, vertical cabinet is loaded with flexible storage and display options."

It features a drop lid front, a mirrored back and lighted interior for added ambience, deep shelves for storing glasses and bottles, wine glass channels, two deep storage drawers and three adjustable and removable shelves for displaying wines.

At Riverside, wine storage and dining marry to create the Cobble Hill dining storage table, featuring a wine rack storage for up to eight bottles, a storage drawer and an extra shelf, all under either a round or square top surface. It retails for about $750.

"This is wasted space ordinarily, so I think it's a great idea," Owen of Riverside said about the underneath storage feature. "It serves a real purpose. I don't think you can have too much storage."

Another unique, multifunctional piece that debuted at the spring market was Classic Flame's electric fireplace with a multifunction media cabinet, designed to be used in any room of the house because it requires no venting or permits, and plugs into any standard 120-volt outlet. The piece allows homeowners to simultaneously watch a movie and enjoy the ambience of a fire, with or without heat. The combination serves the desire of that homeowner seeking ambience as well as storage solutions all in one. The piece features a flat-top surface for the TV and shelving on either side of an electric fireplace, set in the middle of the unit, said Doug Gold of Classic Flame.

"The idea is to have a beautiful piece of furniture that serves a multifunctional purpose," Gold said. "It's a piece of furniture that acts as a furnace that's secondary or tertiary."

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