Decoration
The Ritz Domesticated – Why are Hotel-Style Bedroom Makeovers Growing So Popular?
More and more people are being inspired to turn their bedrooms at home into high-end hotel rooms. Click here to find out more about the trend.
The Ritz Domesticated – Why are Hotel-Style Bedroom Makeovers Growing So Popular?
Look on any interior design website, in the pages of any dedicated magazine, or flick through to any trending video on the subject, and it won’t be long before you stumble upon a guide to turning your bedroom at home into a five-star-worthy, luxury experience. From fluffy eiderdowns to pared-back décor and striking just the right vibe with lighting, it turns out that achieving the premium hotel-suite ambiance is about more than leaving a minty chocolate on your pillow.
Why the live-in hotel?
Hotels are liminal spaces, and liminal spaces are uniquely comforting to us. Amid the turmoil and stress of travel, they represent still and quiet oases that offer the perfect antidote to constant motion, sound, unfamiliar smells and people.
Of course, hotels are as strange to us as any other aspect of travel, but there’s a level of familiarity that connects a room in Paris with a room 3,600 miles away in New York City. That level of predictability masterfully blended with each hotel’s idiosyncrasies – their colour palettes, their modernist elegance or vintage charm, their atmospheres and quiet (or overt) luxuries – is what makes them such fascinating places to land.
Of course, there are a few more obvious reasons why hotel rooms pose such strong inspiration for at-home interior designers. For one thing, these rooms are built around a finite list of very specific purposes: comfort, peace, rest, and privacy.
A fresh focus
Even with the best will in the world, it is hard to keep a bedroom devoted to those priorities. True, they will always be places of rest and comfort, but how often is a bedroom in a busy family home caught in the crossfire of everyday life? Scattered belongings, items that have yet to find their home, clothing halfway to the washing basket, books on the bedside tables that will never be turned beyond chapter three and odd socks that may be freshly laundered or freshly worn – who knows? – we rarely give ourselves the same level of indulgence as a hotelier.
The difficulty lies in tempering the beauty of a hotel room with its inherent impersonality. Hotel rooms may share many of the same furnishings as a bedroom, but there is a world of difference between them when it comes to the type of welcome they impart. The best bedroom designs will feel personal to their inhabitants, and not designed to appeal to hundreds of anonymous visitors.
Of course, the very best hotels make guests feel as though they stand at the centre of a well-rehearsed dance – that’s the key element to remember. To make a bedroom feel very luxuriously staged for indulgence, rather than run-of-the-mill sleep. There’s something deeply personal about that.
The Tricks Up the Hotelier’s Sleeve…
…that can be replicated at home without turning your bedroom into a generic space.
First-rate comfort
If there’s one thing any luxury hotel knows it needs to get right, it’s the bedding. Hotels are something of a mystery box when it comes to the quality of the bed, but we all set high expectations for plush, layered bedding, soft pillows of down or feather, and the crisp, clean smell of freshly – and lovingly, rather than aggressively – laundered linens.
Add a couple of opportunities for comfort in other parts of the room – a versatile slipper chair for dressing, or, at the foot of the bed, an ottoman that offers additional seating as well as storage.
Atmospheric Lighting
While we tend to think of smell as the most enveloping element, lighting is just as effective – if not more so – at setting the tone for anyone entering, even if they still have one foot on the threshold. Beautiful lighting sets a beautiful tone and, in many ways, hotels wrote the book on creating versatile spaces with lighting
While hallways need to remain well-lit, a sense of privacy and comfortable isolation needs to be established when hotel-stayers return to their rooms. Layered lighting is the most versatile option, and it also adds spots of intrigue throughout the room in place of clutter of personal decor.
Little (organised) luxuries
Fresh flowers – expertly arranged, not just posted into the vase – organisation trays that are never overrun with clutter, a few of your favourite toiletries, and bedside tables never overrun – but always sprinkled with the essentials. Take William Morris’s advice – never anything that is not useful or beautiful – to the nth degree when it comes to adding personal items to surfaces.
Keep the walls simply decorated
In a hotel room, the furnishings do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to adding character and a sense of luxury into a space. The walls are relatively sparsely furnished, which creates a sleek, pared-back look perfect for making inhabitants feel ready for relaxation, stillness, and sleep. Introduce one or two generously-sized mirrors into the space, and complement those with a couple of smaller art prints or framed landscapes. It needn’t feel generic – simply peaceful.
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