There’s nothing quite like staying in the luxury of a boutique hotel. So much so that you find yourself wanting to bring that experience and luxury back to your home.
The feeling of walking into a luxury boutique hotel room provides an immediate sense of calm, a curated ambience, and those crisp bed sheets that help you drift off to sleep effortlessly.
Of course, the carefully curated and designed boutique hotel is a far cry from the everyday chaotic daily homes that most households are familiar with. From cluttered surfaces and mismatched decor, it can be hard to see the beauty and potential luxury in your home.
However, you don’t need a five-star budget or a professional interior designer to replicate this experience within your home. If you’re looking to create that luxury environment within your own bedroom or bathroom, here’s how to do it.
Sensory Design: The Invisible Elements of Luxury
Many of these luxury boutique hotels will establish an immediate brand identity through the use of scents.
Choosing a signature home fragrance is a good way of helping create a beautiful space through sensory design. You can achieve this with the use of reed diffusers, room mists, and high-end candles. Focus on sophisticated notes like amber, tobacco, linen, and cedar, for example.
Noise control is something to think about when it comes to transforming your home into a boutique hotel. Investing in heavyweight curtains and even blinds behind those curtains can help dampen external street noise. Draft excluders and soft rugs can also help to dampen echoes and noise that comes from other household members within the home.
Texture is good to implement into the spaces, too. Layering materials helps to invite touch, so consider incorporating different materials from velvet to brushed brass, natural linen and boucle, for example.
Lighting Architecture: Layering for Mood
When it comes to layering for mood, the use of lighting architecture is key. The importance of harsh center ceiling lights will destroy any ambiance that you’re trying to create.
There are three layers of lighting worth knowing about:
- Ambient – Soft background illumination
- Task – Directed reading lamps or vanity lighting
- Accent – Warm LEDs highlighting architectural features or artwork
In order to recreate the lighting ambience of a boutique hotel in your home, installing dimmer switches everywhere is a good idea. Using warm white bulbs and introducing some bedside, wall-mounted sconces will help to free up nightstand space.
Try to avoid any harsh clinical white light. This can really strip the spaces of the warmth and comfort, even in bathrooms. Try to add more layered lighting in the bedrooms so that you can alternate between different light settings depending on the time of day.
The Five-Star Bedroom Sanctuary
The bedroom should be the main priority when you’re trying to recreate the beauty of a boutique bedroom hotel.
For many hotels, the cloud-like bed is a formula that many households would want to work out for the benefit of a good night’s sleep.
Consider prioritizing a high-thread-count percale or sateen white cotton over busy patterns. For layering, you’ll want to make use of a crisp, flat sheet and a heavy down-alternative duvet.
Symmetry and scale are something that’s important to think about when it comes to decorating the space. The visual balance helps to create a lot of calm in the environment. Consider matching bedside tables and wardrobes, and having the same lamps at either end of the bedside. An oversized statement headboard helps to draw the eye as a focal point.
If there’s space available, then you could also add a singular armchair or velvet bench at the foot of the bed in the corner of a room to help make it feel like a multi-functional site, rather than just a place to sleep. This is often the standard setup used when it comes to bedrooms in boutique hotels.
For those with extra rooms available, creating a dressing room is another way of creating that luxury in your home.
The Spa-Inspired Bathroom Retreat
To help create that spa-inspired bathroom retreat that many enjoy when staying in a hotel, several useful tips help to create that desired space.
Aggressive decluttering
Unlike a lot of homes, the appearance of a boutique hotel bathroom is one that’s often minimal in clutter and spotless in its cleanliness.
With that being said, getting rid of all the daily toiletries from off the counter and hidden out of sight is essential.
Cohesive decanting
Replacing mismatched plastic shampoo and soap bottles with more uniform, amber glass or ceramic pump dispensers can really help elevate the look and appearance of the bathroom. It mimics the appearance of most bathrooms found in hotels of all types, from boutique to chain hotels.
Plush upgrades to implement
It’s good to look at adding in any plush upgrades that are contributing to the lacklustre look of the space. For example, replacing thin towels with oversized, high-gsm bath sheets is something that could be rolled up into baskets.
A wooden bath bridge, fresh bundles of eucalyptus hanging from the showerhead, and a plush waffle bathroom are all great ways to add something extra to the bathroom.
Curated Details & Hospitality Touches
It’s often the curated details and those hospitality touches that truly make a notable difference when trying to achieve that boutique feel to your home that’s like a hotel.
Simple habits can help to elevate the evening routine and feel as though you’re enjoying the luxury of a hotel stay. Look at closing your drapes, dimming the lights in the room, and leaving a carafe of fresh water with glasses on the nightstand before going to bed.
Creating small and intentional moments of beauty, such as a stack of hardback design books with a small tray for jewelry, elevates the space greatly.
Transform Your Home Space into a Boutique Hotel
A boutique hotel feel is more about meticulous attention to lighting, textiles, and the everyday rituals, rather than expensive square footage.
Start small and with one room at a time. You want to enjoy the process of turning your home into a permanent vacation.
