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During the pandemic, our homes really did become our castles, and for many of us ever since, they’re our sanctuaries too. Whether you’re chilling out in solitude, or entertaining your friends and family, a touch of luxury can make all the difference to the way you feel about your home.
Elevating your living space need not necessitate grand renovations. Small, luxury upgrades can significantly transform your home’s ambiance, imbuing each room with an elevated sense of sophistication.
Be prepared to dive into a world of aesthetic innovation and discover how these understated enhancements can create a home that truly reflects your unique sense of style.
Here are some ways in which you can upgrade that don’t require a costly remodel, yet still add a dash of opulence to your interiors.
Carefully source investment pieces
Whilst most of our suggestions can flex to your budget, there are some opulent items that are worth the spend. From crystal cut tumblers to luxury dining chairs, investing in homewares that you not only love, but will last you for many years to come is money well spent when it comes to the hours of use and enjoyment you’ll get from them.
Remember that one person’s trash
We’ve covered forking out for new luxury items, but what about those that others no longer want? As well as charity shops and second hand stores, we’d recommend sniffing out a bargain online, where you can often find high-end items available at much lower prices. Head to Facebook marketplace for larger items, and eBay and Vinted for smaller homewares, and look forward to improving your home for less especially is given a revitalised makeover.
Get clever with reflections
One thing many of us struggle with in our homes is making rooms feel light and airy; we don’t all have loft apartments with floor to ceiling windows! One way of introducing not only the illusion of space, but also more light into your room is through using mirrors to bounce the daylight from the room’s windows into those darker corners.
Upgrading thrifted mirrors by painting the frames or sectioning them for a window effect can bring mirrors in keeping with the rest of your homewares without breaking the bank. This makes for a cohesive space that feels bigger, and therefore more luxury, than it is.
Dare to go dark
In the right room, dark paint can make an ordinary space feel rich and indulgent, with colours like crimson, forest green, navy and even black making a big impact as part of your colour palette tones.
If painting all your walls a dark colour sounds a bit much but you’d still like to make a luxury statement, you could opt instead for a dark accent wall, rug, decorative throw pillows or stylish curtains, against which your other homewares or wall art will really pop.
Swap to silk
Nothing says luxury quite like the soft and sumptuous introduction of silk to your home. Bedding and cushions covers are the most obvious ways in which tactile silk can bring some extravagance into your space, but other areas to consider are lamp shades, table runners, or even curtain tiebacks.
High-end accents
Whilst you might not be prepared to switch your existing big ticket items out to marble worktops, gold light fixtures and solid wood furniture, the good news is that you can find many of these materials on smaller homewares. This includes entire vases or candlesticks, or it could be as accents on larger items when you come to upgrade.
Finding these gems and coordinating them appropriately with the rest of your decor can elevate your space, making even the most mundane look expensive and luxurious. This also applies to feature walls where the right wallpaper can really be stand out and give a luxurious look.
Raise the roof
Not literally, unless you’re considering a loft conversion. No, we mean making your ceilings look higher, giving anyone entering your home the impression that it’s…well, a bit fancier. You can do this by hanging your curtain rods higher than your windows, which is a clever illusion that works well at little extra cost.
Go mad for mouldings
Period design features are very ‘in’ right now, though we’re talking more about ceiling roses and the wall panelling of the Edwardian era, not the avocado bathrooms of the 70s. If your home doesn’t come with these charming touches, you can create them DIY style; cut down trim made from materials such as MDF, attach them to the wall and give the whole lot a lick of paint for your very own homemade mouldings. It will bring character into the room as well as that all-important touch of luxury.
Make your hardware work harder
Even if it’s not immediately obvious, handles and knobs can make or break the look of a room, from your internal doors right down to cupboards and drawers. Upgrading these, instead of the whole door or unit, can be an inexpensive way to immediately improve things, making regular items look far more expensive than they originally were.
Large statement artworks
Not only can the right wall accessories bring a bit of personality into your home, large pieces can create a feeling of luxury too, thanks to the assumption that art is expensive – even if you thrifted it, or got a large piece from a budget store.
