The first thing you see when you walk into Patrick McInerney's living room is that there's nothing to see.

The walls are bare; ditto for the ceiling. You try to turn on the lights, but there doesn't appear to be a switch anywhere. There's music playing, but where is it coming from? The lamp obviously is working -- the bulb is glowing -- but the cord appears to go right into the plaster.

Part interior illusionist and part aesthetic anorexic, McInerney is a practicing member of the cult of disappearing design, the you-used-to-see-it, now-you-don't aesthetic that aims to secrete anything with a switch, cord or subwoofer.

Hiding the functional items that lack an aesthetic raison d'être is a passion for McInerney, a 44-year-old architect from San Diego. He compares his drive to streamline with the process of writing a novel. "Each word is considered and refined, not only for the word's meaning but also its relationship to other words," he wrote in an email, "and the landscape in which the words are brought together."

Simply stashing your stereo in a closet or throwing a shawl over your ottoman isn't enough. Advocates of the invisible aesthetic are "interested in having our work reflect and melt into the environment," said Rene Gonzalez, a Miami architect who brought his vision to a client's $47 million home in Miami-Dade County, Fla. "We think about enclosures that can dissipate and disappear, so that the outside and inside bleed into each other."

Driven by technology and ingenuity, this kind of design pursues such goals as "zero sightlines" (fixtures that can't be seen in profile) and seamless, shadowless surfaces (light switches camouflaged to look like the wall, lighting fixtures that lurk behind small apertures). Among other things you won't see: handles on drawers (which instead open with a touch of a finger); dining room tables when not in use (which collapse to less than an inch wide). Note: Remove plates before folding.

One major proponent of the unseen look is the Trufig brand, which offers disguised designs for power outlets and data jacks, as well as tablets and touch panels built into walls. Trufig bills itself as "a revolutionary design solution" whose products help alleviate annoying eyesores, including devices that "protrude out of the wall or ceiling" and create distracting "shadow lines." A company brochure, which features a photograph of a chameleon in front of a marble wall, states: "Unfortunately, code, safety and convenience dictate (such devices) be there. Do they have to be such a visual intrusion?"

On a practical level, disappearing design is meant both to maximize usable space (particularly in small urban apartments) and minimize "visual noise," created by things such as knobs, air vents and widescreen TVs.

More and more, "people like ... a clean look," said Alexandra Mathews, vice president for international sales and marketing at Lucifer Lighting in San Antonio. "It's nice to be in a place where you're not forced to look at a bunch of things."

And while Mathews and others concede that such a look isn't for everyone ("Some people like hardware and clutter," she said), they can cite plenty of proof that the disappearing-design look is in vogue, including the popularity of both Ikea furniture and the iPad (the latter being buttonless).

C.C. Sullivan, a spokesman for Lucifer (the lighting company, not the Prince of Darkness), outlined all kinds of spots where traditional elements are disappearing today, including cooktops, other kitchen appliances, bath accessories, drawer fronts, baseboards, medicine cabinets and window frames.

The Seura company in Green Bay, Wis., sells a line of "vanishing" TVs that look like large mirrors when not in use. The company offers more than 100 frames for these TV sets. Firms such as Modern Doors Direct in Miami offer frame-free entry ways that promise clean lines.

One of the earliest proponents of disappearing design was William L. Murphy, who invented his pivoting bed in the early 20th century. Since then, many have attempted improvements on the Murphy bed. One innovation, the Take the Bed Up Down system, allows a mattress to seemingly materialize from the heavens (it's lowered from a compartment in the ceiling). French designer Rene Bouchara has created a sleek, white-on-white retractable bed that would look right at home in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Bouchara also designed a nearly invisible console table (sold at Roche Bobois) that is made almost entirely of clear glass.

Fisher & Paykel makes sleek, flat-topped kitchen stoves with controls that sit on the same plane as the ceramic glass cooktop. The entire stove is less than 4 inches tall.

However, that's almost bulky compared to the table and chairs designed by Alexander Gendell's Folditure, whose collapsible pieces extend a tradition dating to ancient Egypt, the company says. Both the table and chair (known as the Cricket and the Leaf) fold to less than 1-inch thick. You can hang the seating for your dinner party in the same closet where you stow the guests' coats.

Folding is also the idea behind a shower concept from Duravit, a German company whose OpenSpace shower enclosure comes with two locking doors that collapse against the wall after use.

At McInerney's San Diego home, the oh-so-subtle stereo speakers on the ceiling have been perfectly integrated into the texture and color of the plaster. Light streams into the room from slots and punctures, rather than visible fixtures. And those lamps that are in view plug into outlets that are also perfectly integrated into the plaster finish.

"It's so simple," he said. "It's sort of like, 'Why has it taken so long to get here?' "