5 Smart Ways to Add Luxury to Your Home without Breaking the Bank
- Written by Henry Martin, a residential and commercial developer with years of experience in real estate.
Luxury is not necessarily exclusive or expensive. A sense of style, a thoughtful detail, a playful splash of colour – these kinds of stylistic nuances can elevate the interior and exterior life of your home. House décor can be achieved on an everyday budget and simple tips and tricks can invite luxury into how you style it.
Whether you are simply looking for inspiration to add the ‘wow’ factor to your home or boost its value when you come to selling it, these top five tips will help you get a luxurious look and feel on a budget.
1. Stick to the classics
When staging your house with larger, heavier furnishing, the likes of a couch or a cosy mantel for your fireplace, consider an item in a neutral style. Leave the playful aesthetics to replaceable parts of your house – you can always change wallpaper, add a new coat of paint, or bring in a new carpet or lighting fixture to add vibrancy later. Yet, heavy furniture is a long-term investment. It is much simpler to add character through accessories, colour and lighting, than it is to replace heavy furniture to suit the changing fashions.
Timeless styles, often in neutral colours, are easy to pair and never fade from fashion. Classics in heavy furniture can be styled to last and, in this regard, are more of an investment than throwaway trendy items around your house.
2. Bring the outside in
There is no greater source of inspiration than the view from your windows. This exciting tip, to use greenery to inspire your style, can bring new life to the exteriors and interiors of your house. House décor gurus often insist that, even as a smaller detail such as a house plant, nature can lift the character of a house. From a house with a spacious garden, to a city house, nature can inspire the sights, sounds and smells of your house.
For the exterior of your house, bring colour and invite nature into your garden. Use plants that attract the birds and bees – whether a dash of purple from domestic lavender, or a handsome foxglove. These will spring with the seasons and attract both nature and its song to your garden, which become colourful and scented.
A balcony, or window, is an excellent opportunity to be playful with your gardening and how your house attracts nature.
When you are designing the interior life of your house, you can bring the outside in. If you are operating on a narrow budget, or want a rustic impression, consider using your garden as a resource. You could, for example, dry your lavender and place it in the living room to spread its natural scent throughout the house. A house plant can make your house more attractive, especially for guests.
3. Add Light
If it now sounds like a design cliché, it is likely because lighting really change the style and experience of your house. With the right balance, capturing proper light can enhance the ambiance and style inside your house. The effectiveness of lighting in your house will depend on many factors: the height of your ceilings, the layout of each room, the type of fixture; and the amount of natural light available.
Fixtures include chandeliers, standing lamps, desktop ones, and plenty of others. The fixture is only part of the solution; the bulb (such as energy efficient ones) should be part of your planning. This is because different bulbs can affect hue, ranging from warm to cold, or even fluorescence.
You can get creative with sources of light, but the best way to improve the harmony of light and shade in your house is through understanding the availability of natural light. If you are replacing your windows, you can play with styles and materials to make your house more inviting to natural light.
4. Introduce texture
Traditional advice from stylists places a premium on textures to reenergize the interior of your home. This means taking neutral surfaces, like a hardwood floor, and bringing in new colour and fabrics to add character and colour in strong measure.
Most commonly, you can achieve the desired texture through a rug or carpet. If you are looking to add a real sense of luxury, then a natural material such as wool, sheepskin, jute or sisal will be the way to go. However, there are many synthetic materials available on the market that will be able to sufficiently bring luxury to your home at a very cost effective price. If a synthetic material more suits your budget, then you are best looking at polypropylene, polyester or acrylic. You can also look into a viscose rug, though these can shed easily and can be a hassle to maintain.
Alternatively house plants, patterns, textiles, cushions, or curtains can also be introduced to add texture. You can get creative with colour and fabric, which presents an opportunity to get playful with your styles without breaking the bank.
It’s also worth mentioning natural fibres, especially if you are building up a design profile based on the nature around your house. Natural woods, linens, stone or leather are popular textures that can layer in attractive flourishes to your home’s interior design.
5. Minimalize
Toward a tidied, uncluttered design – making your home minimalist is often considered Zenlike. There are other benefits to an uncluttered design, from easier to clean, to less stress; a home with less can feel larger.
Minimize might mean clean surfaces; quality items over the quality of them; less furniture but designing your house around key points; and accent décor. Choose the features of each room wisely, if attentively, and build around these key accents. You might, for example, place a potted houseplant next to an art catalogue on your coffee table. When you next host, the subject of its art can be an interesting talking point. You can design your house around conversations.
The clean, tidy aesthetic has regained momentum in the public. It is often associated with zen and other meditative acts.
While certain styles and fashions can feel exclusive to larger budgets, it is a universal law that style can belong to anyone willing to discover it. You can occasionally delight in the more expensive décor, but if you are wanting to keep to a budget, then dressing your house with these tips can elevate your style without costing too much.
