Not long ago, home fitness equipment was hidden. Men kept a rusting bench and iron plates lurking in a garage corner. Women's pink wrist weights and aerobic steps were stored discreetly in the linen closet. No more. Machines are out, plainly visible and used regularly. To some, the home gym is a status symbol.

        “We see a lot of equipment in living rooms,” says Bruce Courier, sales manager for an equipment dealer in Scottsdale, Ariz. “People have relaxed their standards. They're putting an emphasis on health.”

        That emphasis means anything that keeps people moving — rooms with rotating rock walls for avid climbers; mirrors, bars and suspended wood floors for dancers; a yoga mat; and a Tae-Bo video on the big-screen TV in the family room.

        In the high-end market: “My clientele will put $500,000 in home entertainment. I tell them the same should be put into a home gym to make it enticing so it will be used every day,” says fitness designer Mark Harigian. “People don't have generic rooms in their homes, why would they have a generic gym?”

        L.A. -based Harigian Fitness designs and builds “workout environments” for athletes and other wealthy notables who work out in style. A few professional athletes such as Shaquille O'Neal and such celebrities as Madonna, Tom Hanks and Tom Selleck have used Harigian's fitness finesse.

        In a Harigian home gym, athletes may use recycled high-school lockers engraved with their names. Stainless-steel equipment comes accented with the same interior leather used in British luxury vehicles such as Jaguar and Land Rover. Want a chenille-covered lat machine (to develop the latissimus dorsi muscle) to flow with the rest of the home? Delivered. However, Harigian advises, “No matter what you get, you have to use it.”

        The first step is finding a fitness designer to fit equipment to the needs and preferences of those the people using the room.

        When designer Lee Hutchingson created a gym on the second floor of Stan and Tochia Levine's Paradise Valley, Ariz., home eight years ago, he says he wasn't aiming for large, high-tech or fussy. The room boasts three walls of full-length mirrors and provides ample space to view technique.

        “We'd rather spend money on a gym than give it to doctors when we get older,” Stan Levine says.

        The gym fits the Levines' lifestyle, and visiting grandchildren use the room, too. It has ceiling fans, a stair-climbing machine, stationary bike, treadmill, free weights, a television, and posters showing correct exercise form and position. Another part of the room has a juice bar, sauna and a massage table.

        Sometimes the decision to invest in a home gym comes down to privacy and convenience.

        Ms. Courier says most of his clients are in their mid-30s, married with children, with incomes around $75,000. Some are athletic types tired of commutes and fighting over equipment at the fitness club; others are following a doctor's advice.

        Regardless of the motivation for a home gym, there are two types of equipment, Mr. Courier says, that outsell the rest: single stations that work one muscle area, such as like a favorite leg machine, and machines to benefit the cardiovascular system, such as a treadmill, bicycle or elliptical trainer.

        “With two cardio pieces, couples can work out together, at the same time,” Mr. Courier says. Equipment is set up in empty bedrooms, extraordinary bathrooms or an extra garage stall. This in contrast to five or more years ago when homeowners chose to expand kitchens or bedrooms.

        Having space helps, but even small areas are suitable.

        Even with a dream gym, sometimes the neutral colors and clean lines of equipment serve just to look good.

        “We sell home-gym setups for a room just to fit a look,” Mr. Courier says. “It's a status room. It does happen.”

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