A luxury touch is something that any home can get! With a little effort and smart budgeting, the home you live in now can be the home you love tomorrow. Just follow these tips for how to give your house a luxury design!

What Is Luxury Design?

Lots of different images come to mind when thinking of a luxury home. For some, it's a refined, crisp look with every detail in the perfect place. For others, it's an unspoken quality of having patterns and textures perfectly mixed. The one thing that's for certain is that we all know luxury when we see it. Here are some core tenets of luxury design:

• Intentional: Luxury design is committed to a certain style. Nothing looks accidental!

• Well-crafted: Luxury design is inherently high-quality design. While pieces don't necessarily need to be expensive to be luxurious, they should have a substantial look to them.

• Authentic: Every element needs to look like something the homeowner has authentically fallen in love with while decorating! This is where luxury becomes distinguishable from trendiness. While trendy pieces simply mirror what's popular at the moment, luxury pieces are clearly prized and treasured for deeper reasons.

• Comforting: Luxury homes are inviting! While they are aesthetically pleasing, they are also ergonomically pleasing and comfortable.

• Clarifying: While there is an eclectic arm of luxury, luxury homes don't have clutter. By simply maintaining blank spaces and eliminating clutter, you can turn a "busy" home into a bougie palace!

How to Give Your House a Luxury Design

Consider your monetary and time budgets! Some luxury upgrades require demolition. Others just require a smart eye for rearranging. Here are some hacks for giving your home the luxury look.

Go for Gold

Subtlety is a friend of luxury. One way to add understated, practically subconscious luxury to a home is to update all current lighting fixtures and door handles to gold. While chrome and black are trendy, gold is truly the finish associated with luxury. For enhanced luxury, update all of your home's outlet wall plates to gold.

Learn to Love the Focal Point

We've all had the experience of walking into a museum or venue that has a breathtaking focal point that truly demands all of the air in a room! You can recreate this on a small scale in rooms in your home. Start by choosing your home's focal point. For example, a fireplace mantel that's the focal point of a room can get the luxury treatment with a bold framed painting. In order to feed into the focal point, eliminate competing clutter on either side of the mantel. This can quickly turn a standard detail in a room into an architectural feature. Large paintings, mirrors, or lighting fixtures can all be used to create focal points in various parts of a home. For a more dramatic makeover, consider painting, wallpapering, or paneling an accent wall to be a focal point. Large area rugs also work for this task!

Elongate Spaces With Runners

There's no doubt that large area rugs can make great focal points. However, runner rugs are dramatically underused when it comes to adding luxurious touches. A rectangular rug with an elegant pattern can add interest to a hallway while also making it appear much longer. Runners can also be used to create areas of interest within larger spaces. For instance, placing an elegant runner between wall cabinets and a kitchen island can create a high-luxury, custom look.

Add More Natural Light With This Trick

Dark, dull corners in a home can accentuate the fact that your home may not have many windows. The answer isn't always to take on a major renovation that brings more natural light into your home. Consider utilizing the "bounce effect" by strategically hanging mirrors in your home to reflect more natural light. This extra light can make a room feel bigger, brighter, and airier in the same way that actually opening up walls to make more windows can.

Layer Textures and Patterns

Mixed and layered textures and patterns signify that old-style wealth that you see in homes throughout places like Beverly Hills and the Hamptons. However, the thought of mixing patterns without creating an overpowering, sloppy aesthetic is challenging. According to experts, the key to mixing patterns is to follow the rule of three. The rule of three involves using three patterns in varying sizes and scales. For example, you could combine a large-scale floral print, medium-scale geometric pattern, and small-scale abstract pattern. When striving for a luxury aesthetic, some timeless prints to consider include stripes, toile, gingham, and nautical.

Written by Taylor McKnight, Author for Ventus Design