Home Depot Inc. is going upscale -- and offering to do it for you.

In a departure from its stripped-down warehouses that have all but defined the do-it-yourself market, the home improvement giant is rolling out a new division that does away with lumber piled to the rafters, PVC pipe by the foot and salespeople in utilitarian orange aprons.

At the company's new Expo Design Centers, such as one that opened last month in Fairfax, Va., shoppers may instead feel transported into the glossy pages of a home decor magazine.

At Expo, custom-designed kitchen and bath "vignettes" showcase the latest in luxury appliances and fixtures. Separate showrooms highlight tile and marble and designer appliances. In other room settings, antiques dress up displays of chandeliers and Dale Tiffany lamps.

Don't worry if coordinating rugs with draperies and counter tops with cabinets seems a daunting task.

For a $750 retainer that applies to final costs of $5,000 or more, an Expo interior designer will pull together an entire room or project. The stores also try to appeal to consumers who don't want paint on their clothes and plaster in their hair.

The store sells no installation materials, but will arrange to have subcontractors do the work. Consumers are required to lift nothing heavier than a credit card.

"It's an idea factory, with eight showrooms under one roof," said Don Harrison, a Home Depot spokesman. "Expo picks up where Depot leaves off."

Harrison and others at Home Depot flinch at hearing Expo labeled "upscale," saying the store offers a range of prices that are competitive. But there's no shortage of high-end items that shoppers would never see at Home Depot, such as a $20,000 Schonbek chandelier, a $9,000 hand-knotted rug, a $2,000 chrome-and-glass bathroom vanity or a $3,999 refrigerator with a cigar humidor and compartments to chill red and white wine. One could easily spend $50,000 on an Expo-designed kitchen.

Over the next five years, the company plans to open about 200 Expos nationwide, targeting middle- and upper-middle-class suburbs. Baltimore is a possible Expo site but the retailer has yet to begin a site search, Harrison said.

Home Depot is joining other retailers in seeking a niche among affluent consumers, one largely unserved by national chains. The timing couldn't be better, as newly rich baby boomers age -- and indulge a mania for decorating, analysts said.

Demographics -- even more than pressure from Wall Street to maintain corporate growth -- are driving Home Depot's plans, said Kenneth Gassman, an analyst who follows home improvement retailing for Davenport & Co. of Richmond, Va.

"Those baby boomers are entering a new spending phase in their life, because the second mortgage on the house is paid, the car is paid off, the kid's college bill is paid off," Gassman said. "They are at peak earning power, but they also have the propensity to buy luxury goods. Baby boomers were always big spenders.

"Expo is clearly targeting wealthier consumers, who have large homes, older homes and high discretionary incomes," he said. "That's what we're playing to between now and 2009."

Home Depot has opened a dozen Expos in Texas, Florida, Virginia, New York, Georgia and California, and considers those hugely successful. They perform at least as well, on average, as the average Home Depot, which generates $40 million in annual sales, Harrison said.

In a field of mostly regional specialty stores, tile suppliers, rug shops, kitchen design showrooms, only Sears, Roebuck and Co. is trying a similar concept nationally, analysts said. Sears opened the Great Indoors home decoration and remodeling store in Denver last year and will open one in Scottsdale, Ariz., in November -- the start, the chain hopes, of a 200-superstore chain.

"There really is a void in the marketplace, and Home Depot is basically trying to fill that void," said Asma Usmani, a retail analyst with Edward Jones in St. Louis. "It's another source of growth for Home Depot, but the bulk of the revenue and earnings will be derived from the traditional Home Depot stores."

Arthur M. Blank, the chain's chief executive officer, has said he has no intention of neglecting those core, do-it-yourself warehouses, which he expects to double over the next three years to 1,600. But it's clear that the Atlanta chain, which led home improvement retailing last year with $30.2 billion in sales, also has no intention of leaving niche retailing to competitors.

Another of Home Depot's experiments is Villager's Hardware, which Home Depot is promoting as a re-creation of the hardware store. But at a third of the size of a Home Depot, Villager's hardly resembles a neighborhood hardware shop.

The store has 10 departments that sell everything from dishes to vacuum cleaners to ready-to-assemble furniture as well as the more traditional plants and tools geared to small projects. It also features resource centers where staff demonstrate products and techniques, show how-to videos, cut things like rope and tubing to size and sell moving aids, such as casters and hand trucks.

Home Depot, which opened the first Villager's store in June in New Jersey and plans three more there by the end of next year, considers those stores part of a test, not part of a major store rollout, said Jami Buck, a Home Depot spokeswoman.

With Expo, though, the company has moved well beyond testing, believing it has perfected the formula.

At the Fairfax store, shoppers flow through 15 kitchen displays, 40 bath vignettes, 10 lighting showrooms and separate showrooms for window treatments and fabrics, rugs and carpeting, patio furniture, appliances and tile.

They marvel at the $13,000 red enamel Aga stove with multiple ovens, at hidden-away cubbyholes for wine and spices, at dishwashers concealed behind cabinet panels. They run their fingers over smooth granite counter tops and cherry cabinets and gaze longingly at whirlpool tubs set off by dramatic black-and-white marble and tile. A row of vanities inspires plenty of ideas for redoing the bathroom, with sink basins of hammered copper or painted porcelain.

With the help of her teen-age son and her parents, visiting from Ohio, Bronwen Kaye was trying to pick out counter tops, tile and appliances for the kitchen of a home she is building in McLean, Va.

"It is all in one place," said Kaye, 51, a lobbyist. "We picked out granite for the counter top, then took the back splash tile and carried it over," to the granite. "It was very convenient. They have things we haven't seen in other places, some of the appliances had exotic colors we hadn't seen."

Prices of high-end goods didn't appear to scare customers away. Peggy Helms came to shop for drapes but lingered in a kitchen display.

"I've shopped for all this stuff, and it's well-priced," said Helms, who is retired and has remodeled much of her Fairfax home during 30 years there.

Henry Liverpool was glad to find an Expo near the house he is remodeling in McLean, just months after moving from Dallas, where he had been a regular Expo customer.

"This is a great place to come for unique stuff," he said, while pricing lamps with his wife, Susan, and 8-month-old son, Will.

The Fairfax Expo looks markedly different from the four earliest Expos, the first of which opened in San Diego in 1991. Then, the company built the stores as warehouses with few amenities. Older Expos sold towels and linens. But such accessories detracted from the focus on kitchens and baths, and the warehouse setting wasn't glitzy enough for luxury goods, Harrison said.

After fine-tuning the concept, the company opened its new Expo prototype in Miami in early 1996, keeping Depot's concept of combining elements in one large store but borrowing heavily from designer showrooms.

In later stores, such as the 80,000-square-foot Fairfax store, the chain has begun including an "in-stock" section, selling everything from picture frames and mirrors to drawer pulls, sinks and vanities. Those who need a break from wandering the racetrack-style floor plan can sink into an armchair in the library, which sells decorating books and magazines, or sip a cappuccino at the in-store coffee bar. And those who fear straining their budget can still dream.

One such shopper checked out cabinets in a bathroom showroom but confessed she was mainly looking for ideas.

"I doubt if my budget can afford this," said Sheryl Algee, a program manager with the Department of Labor in Washington. "It's beautiful, but it's expensive."

But Terry Williams, a public relations specialist shopping with her, said he was intrigued by the idea of Expo.

"People will know where to come to get upscale products," Williams said. "It's a central location for things you'd see in magazines."