Black Mazda RX-7 parked inside a JDM-themed garage in Las Vegas with hexagonal LED ceiling lights and checkerboard floor

GARAGE VISIT

Mazda RX-7 Dream Garage: Leilani Builds Her Own in Las Vegas

Location: Las Vegas, Nevada

Photographer: Nick Camacho

Leilani had a vision for years. Then she picked up the tools herself. In nearly a year of solo work — demo, electrical, insulation, drywall, paint — she built the dream garage she always wanted around a black Mazda RX-7 and a JDM aesthetic that's entirely her own.

JDM-themed garage interior in Las Vegas with Hardtuned banner, Husky tool cabinets, and hexagonal ceiling lights

The Mazda RX-7 is parked in the middle of the garage, black paint reflecting the hexagonal LED grid above it. The weapons are mounted on the wall. The JDM banner is up. The checkerboard floor is clean.

It took Leilani almost a year to get here. And she built every inch of it herself.

This is one of the more personal dream garage builds we've featured — not because of the budget or the brands, but because of how it came to exist. Leilani is an artist and as you'll learn, a true Jill of all trades. She grew up in Las Vegas, got pulled into cars and motorcycles through friends as a teenager, and never left either behind.

She had a vision for this garage for years. When she finally had the chance, she didn't hire it out. She demoed the walls herself, ran her own electrical, installed insulation, hung drywall, and painted every surface. Most of it was her first time doing any of it.

Before and after photo of Las Vegas dream garage with Mazda RX-7, motorcycle, hexagonal lights, and JDM wall art after renovation

Building a Mazda RX-7 Garage From Scratch

The before photo tells it plainly. Raw OSB board walls, bare concrete, nothing. The kind of blank canvas that scares off many. For Leilani, she got to work.

She stripped it, framed it, wired it, insulated it, drywalled it, and painted it. Nearly a year of weekends and evenings. First-time electrical work. First-time drywall. The learning curve was steep but she enjoyed every step of it. By the time the black Mazda RX-7 rolled in, the space was exactly what she'd always pictured.

Ten months in, she wouldn't change a thing about how she did it. "It’s really a dream space and it turned out exactly how I envisioned it."

LeiLani seated on the front of a black Mazda RX-7 FC showing pop-up headlights inside her Las Vegas garage

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The RX-7 and the JDM Aesthetic

The car is the anchor. A black Mazda RX-7 — the FB generation with the iconic pop-up headlights — sits center stage under the hex lights, its hood a mirror reflecting the ceiling grid back at you. It's the reason the garage exists. She's actively rebuilding the RX-7, and the garage was designed to be both an aesthetic reflection of her edgy style and a functional workspace where she can get into the car properly.

That tone is pure JDM. A Hardtuned banner runs along the back wall with bold Japanese script. A red neon scorpion glows above. A Husky tool chest and matching wall cabinets keep the practical stuff organized along the sides. And then there's the wall above the bike: katanas, a spiked club, a throwing axe, a hand-carved axe target board with playing card suits. A coffin-shaped wall piece in black. This garage has a very specific personality and it commits to it completely.

The Hex Lights, the Floor, and the Details That Pull It Together

The bike alongside the RX-7 — blacked out, matching the aesthetic of the space completely. It doesn't fight with the car for attention, it augments.

The hex LED lighting grid is the feature that pulls the whole room together. The panels form an interconnected honeycomb across the ceiling, washing the entire space in clean, bright white. The hex lighting grid is a feature we've seen architects spec into dream builds — here Leilani sourced and installed it herself. On the RX-7's hood, on the checkerboard floor tiles, the reflections multiply it. At night, through the open garage door, it turns the whole space into a glowing cube of light.

The checkerboard floor tiles read as simple though lands as essential. Black and grey, consistent, clean. They complete the look.

An Artist's Space

Leilani makes custom custom area carpets. She snowboards. She paddleboards. She built a garage entirely by hand. The through-line is someone who creates things — who sees a finished result in her mind and figures out how to make it real.

This garage is the clearest version of that. Every choice here is deliberate. The weapons aren't random, they're an aesthetic statement. The JDM references aren't decoration, they're a point of view. The black Mazda RX-7 isn't just a car she drives, it's the centerpiece of a space she designed around it. For garages built by hand around a specific creative vision, The Outpost in Hudson Valley is the closest thing we've seen to this.

Most people talk about wanting a dream garage. Leilani was similar. She had a vision. But Leilani didn't stop there, she picked up the tools herself, and built her dream.