On this exclusive Veranda house tour, you're invited to step inside spectacular Southern homes created by a diverse group of innovative designers and architects that share one important credo: an abiding love of beauty.

The region holds its own as a design mecca, with swoon-worthy style along every coast and in every geographic nook and cranny. You'll tour a wooded cabin in Tennessee, an old farmhouse in Georgia, a serene Low Country island retreat, and exquisite historic homes in Palm Beach and Charleston, and more. From the dreamy Blue Ridge Mountains to the rural Arkansas Delta, from Atlanta to Dallas to Birmingham and beyond, you'll learn the secrets of southern style from designers and architects and how landscape and personality are always essential elements of successful design.

Most important, you'll discover how Southern style is wildy inclusive -an amalgamation of many different aesthetic sensibilities. It's a style that resists easy categorizing and also defies cliché. You'll experience how the warmth of being "at home" is achieved through imaginative and evocative design by visionary designers including Keith Robinson, Mark D. Sikes, Bobby McAlpine, Bunny Williams, Darryl Carter, Phoebe Howards and others.

Steele Thomas Marcoux is the editor of Veranda and a veteran of the design publishing industry, having served in senior editorial roles at County Living, Coastal Living, and Southern Living. She serves on the board of directors for the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, where she lives with her husband, two sons, and dog.

VERANDA epitomizes the very best in living well. The magazine started in Birmingham, AL invites a community of highly engaged tastemakers to celebrate the very best in gracious living and showcases stunning homes from around the country and the world.