Now you have acquired your ideal luxury apartment or house, attention to luxury furniture, fixtures and fittings is how you can turn it into a home. And more importantly, not just any old home, but your own home.
Here are 7 tips on how planning the furnishings for your luxury home or apartment is a vital step, and not an option, if you want to bring the best from your acquisition. Of course, having made a considerable investment in finding the right property for you, it would be a shame if you did not furnish it accordingly.
1. Plan your furnishings
It is essential that you plan your luxury furnishings, so that your home has coherence and style, and so that each room feels part of a unified experience that brings across warmth and personality.
Paying scant attention to furnishings may leave your home or apartment feeling cold and devoid of personality and nothing like your home. Alternatively furnishing in ad hoc and random fashion can leave your house or apartment looking like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul with a clutter of unrelated and uncoordinated furnishings and glare that convey nothing more than a lack of coordination or attention.
2. Get a designers
Unless you personally have a flair and passion for interior design and decoration, and the time to dedicate to crafting the style of your home, not to mention finding the suppliers, then I would recommend engaging a professional interior designer. Firstly a designer will understand your tastes and personality and how you want your home to appear and feel. Maybe you want a contemporary style or a more traditional look? Maybe you like bright colours, dark colours or perhaps sharp contrasts or gradual changes in tone and fabric? Perhaps you want to retain hints of your culture and origins, or perhaps to mix different genres?
Once your designer fully understands what you would like, he or she can propose the ideal luxury furnishings to convey the atmosphere and feeling you want to achieve, ensuring the whole home feels part of a common purpose and design. Of course, this will also save you countless hours hunting for the right combinations of finishes and furnishings.
3. Plan for the Space
Once your designer fully understands the atmosphere you want to create, he or she will assess the space available and the best way to achieve that. Spartan modern furnishings may leave a large house or apartment looking empty and devoid of atmosphere, whereas bulky and heavy furnishings may suffocate a smaller property. Achieving the right balance of furnishings is the skill of any good interior designer.
4. Plan for the Aspect and Light
A good interior designer will not only understand how you want your home to appear but will take into account the light and aspect in each room. Understanding how natural daylight will combine with your furnishings, and how to compensate for a lack of natural illumination, will help create a cosy atmosphere. In particular, an appreciation of how artificial lighting can accentuate a particular part of your room or a furnishing will enhance your home.
5. Understand how you will use your home and when
Will this be your principal home? Will you use it occasionally? Will you use it only in summer or only in winter? Understanding these things can affect your choice of luxury furnishings. If you only intend to use the space in winter, then maybe darker and more wholesome hues and heavier furnishings would be suitable. Alternatively, if you plan only to use it in summer, then maybe lighter furnishings with brighter colours would be better. Whereas, if you want to cater for the whole year, then the skill of an interior designer is to make your home feel warm and appealing all year round.
6. Plan for the future
Presumably you will change your decorations more often than you change your furnishings. So a good designer can help you choose furnishings that will work as well when you decide to change wallpaper or repaint walls.
Also your family situation, now or in the future, can be a consideration for your designer to make sure your home adapts to changes in your circumstances.
7. Will you look to rent your home when you are not there
Finally, understanding if only you will use your home, or whether you will look to rent it when you are not there is something your designer can take into account when deciding your furnishings. If you are looking to rent to a mainstream market, maybe you want your choices of furnishing to reflect that. Or maybe you want to attract renters who appreciate more of an experience and value your personality and quirkiness, like those renting via, say, OneFineStay. Once more, your designer can take this into account with the choice of furniture, fixtures and fittings.
All of these tips can help you acquire the right luxury furnishings to breathe life into your luxury home or apartment.