Interior Design Hacks To Make Your Home Look More Expensive

Creating a luxurious and inviting home isn’t always about the price tag. While some furniture and decor is designed to be as cheaply made as possible, and it shows, there are a few quick and easy ways to hack your home decor to make your home look a little more expensive. With a few clever design choices, you can transform your space to look like one that’s had the touch of an interior designer!

Declutter

The first, and most under-appreciated, hack is to declutter. Go Marie Kondo or Stacey Solomon on your home (whichever is more your style!) and get rid of everything that doesn’t spark joy or that doesn’t serve a purpose any more.

The minimalist way of life of opening up space in your home will give you the opportunity to make more of what you have. With fewer items to work with, a more cohesive decor scheme just falls into place so much more easily! 

But in a home that’s actually lived in – we don’t live in show homes! – there are certain things that you do need around the house, especially if you have a family. We suggest investing in a few key storage units that suit your style, rather than having your stuff out on display 24/7. Honestly, it will make you feel better too!

Decor Rotation

This is a fun little hack that makes every day Christmas, sort of! We love the idea of rotating your decor seasonally. Just like putting up your Christmas decorations, at the beginning of each season you can swap out a few key focal pieces in your living spaces, kitchen, bedroom, dining room – wherever you like. 

Cushion covers can alternate from woolly tartans in winter, to floral in spring and summer, then to fluffy sheepskin cushions in autumn. Choose a few key trinkets to use as a centrepiece on your dining table such as pumpkins and a vase of dried flowers for autumn, or bright sunflowers for summer. 

Seasonally scented candles and essential oils in a diffuser will also add to the overall ambience of your home. We all know how scent can evoke strong emotions, so tying a certain scent to a season can help to spark joy when you arrive home after a long day at work and feel super welcoming to guests. We promise, it’s the type of thing you’ll get endless compliments on!

Layer Lighting

One subtle way to hack your home into looking more expensive is through your lighting. Picture a room with a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, then imagine the same room but with more thoughtfully chosen spotlights in the ceiling, some downlighting around the skirting boards and a lamp casting a warm glow in a corner. Lighting makes a huge difference, especially if you layer it.

If you have the budget or inclination to do so, try setting different lighting scenes for different times of the day. You can set specific lights to come on dimmer or brighter, or even alternate the hue in certain bulbs, depending on what you’re doing and the mood that you want to set, such as dim and warm for a dinner party or bright and light when cooking in the kitchen.

Natural Materials

Think about the most beautiful and well-designed spaces you’ve seen, what really jumps out at you about them? One thing that usually stands out is texture and depth. A stylishly designed home never uses just one single material throughout; instead you’ll notice that they blend a variety of fabrics, surfaces and textiles to create a rich and cohesive environment.

The best way to do this is to use natural materials. Hardwood flooring always has a quality that laminate flooring just can’t beat, although it is a little pricier, so our favourite way to hack this is to use other natural materials layered on top to create more depth. For example, use a sheepskin rug in front of a stove for a gorgeous tactile experience, or a large hessian mat to section out a big open space.

Work surfaces hewn from granite, marble or quartz add a distinctive element to your kitchen, but hack this on a cheaper scale by using wooden chopping boards or smaller marble decorative trays and vases.

The best thing about natural materials like these is that, unlike fleeting trends, they have a timeless appeal and are usually far better quality meaning that they will stand the test of time. You can also factor sustainability into these choices too, which gives your home a far nicer appeal in the long run knowing it’s contributing to a healthier planet!

Colour Palette

One thing that we love to shout about is how to keep your home feeling a certain way by using colour cleverly. Each year there are new colour trends – 2024’s were bright, bold and sunset inspired – but there are also overall palettes that last for generations and others that just naturally give a certain je-ne-sais-quoi around the home.

We’re currently coming out of the grey trend that many say was inspired by the iconic Mrs Hinch – grey sofa, grey walls, grey kitchen cabinets. Grey was the base neutral for a generation of millennials. We’re now heading back towards warmer shades of beige in our home decor. Fortunately, this sway between warm and cool lasts for many years at a time, meaning that as long as you stick with whichever way the pendulum is swaying, you can play with your colours inside the warm or cool palette and your home will still look timely.

Then there are colour palettes that aren’t necessarily on trend but will always just somehow work, whether that’s picking shades within the same colour family – that is, with the same undertones such as duck egg blue alongside a deeper navy – or contrasting colours for more visual interest, such as charcoal and creamy white. 

Taking a moment when choosing new items for your home to ensure that they sit well with your existing colour scheme will work wonders!

And finally, colours have this magic quality to imbue rooms with a certain atmosphere. For example, jewel tones when used in moderation can bring a touch of luxury, especially in a space that uses velvet and heavy weave fabric like a bedroom. On the other end of the scale, bright shades like cyan are invigorating and are good to use in breakfast rooms. Some colours can even come with a warning, such as bright red which may incite lively conversation, but may also hint at aggression – be wary of it in a dining room where the conversation may turn political!

Colour is the perfect way to hack your home into looking more expensive on a budget as you rarely need more than a lick of paint and few accessories to bring a certain feeling into a room, especially if you’ve already done the big declutter and kept only what speaks to you.

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