Hands up who’s been to a hotel, devoured every inch of the interiors and vowed to redecorate once back home. It’s nothing new. Hotels have always been a place to escape to, somewhere that looks and feels wildly different from everyday life, but recently things have gone up a notch. Headboards that wrap around the bed and bedside tables, built-in reading lights and window seats, showerheads the size of car wheels, and a seat in the shower too — suddenly the trend for creating a home that looks, and feels, like a boutique hotel is everywhere. “Client mood boards used to consist of images from Architectural Digest,” says Alex Glover, director of the fine decorating company Austin James, “but now it’s Mr & Mrs Smith hotels.”
It started with Soho House, which set about becoming “a home from home” — just ask the Beckhams, whose Cotswold pile is almost indistinguishable from the nearby Soho Farmhouse. While it’s still hugely influential, thanks in no small part to its Soho Home furniture range (whose squat three-legged marble table is top of the hotelify-your-home bingo card), its title as the hottest hotel to approximate right now has been taken over by Heckfield Place in Hampshire. “It’s the one thing I can guarantee will be mentioned in design meetings,” Glover says. That or the outrageously sumptuous Estelle Manor, Oxfordshire, which is a riot of colour, pattern and antiques.
How did we get here? During the pandemic home was the only thing we had, hence our pouring of ideas and money into them. They needed to be multifunctional, soothing and inspiring. Where better to draw inspiration from than a place that has been expensively designed to be just that? That caters to your every need. But there is a sweet spot. Bryan O’Sullivan, the interior designer who oversaw the revamp of Claridge’s, London, is quick to warn against “anything too gimmicky”: “While embracing the hotel feel brings a sense of glamour, our homes should still be a reflection of ourselves and lives, and with the more genuine and personal touches that you might not find in a suite.” Follow the below and you’re good to go.
Bouji up the bathroom
Padding around on a heated floor in a fluffy dressing gown, turning on a Lefroy Brooks tap that costs more than your monthly mortgage? Yes, hotel-style bathrooms are the pinnacle of luxury and what people now aspire to, leading to an increasing number of spare rooms being sacrificed to create something mega. Some have working fires, others freestanding baths in the middle of the room, and nearly all have an armchair. Samantha Palmer of the Instagram account @the_flint_house, for instance, was inspired by her favourite New York hotels, and found her Devon & Devon bath, once destined for a hotel fit-out, on eBay for about £1,000 (it retails for over £10,000).
“A hallmark for us is always marble, using it generously throughout the room for impact and favouring those with a strong and interesting grain,” O’Sullivan says. “At home we used slabs of Cipollino marble to line our bath and continued this throughout the space, on the walls and floor. It makes for such an inviting and cocooning space.” Meanwhile the A-list interior designer Linda Boronkay says: “Underfloor heating and demister pads behind the mirrors are important for creating a luxurious and functional space.” And the shower? “Consider installing a double showerhead and a bench if space allows — also recessed shelves for your products.”
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Perfect your pillow talk
For the bed itself, you know the drill: impossibly big and dressed to the nines. “If it’s an emperor bed we use three pillows in a row, stacked two or even three high. It needs to feel sumptuous,” says Candy Murray, the Soho House interior style manager, who recommends goose down, allergies permitting. In front of the pillows — yes, really, there’s more — sit two bolster cushions, often in a pattern that ties in with the curtains and throw, which is “folded across a corner at the bottom”. Apparently it’s more uncommon for guests at Claridge’s not to ask where the duvet and pillows are from on checkout. The response? Pillows and duvet are by the German brand Mühldorfer, whose Premium Special Down Pillow comes in at £185; linens are from the Italian manufacturer Rivolta Carmignani; and the mattresses, with no fewer than 2,000 pocket springs, are Sleepeezee. But the ultimate boutique-hotel flex is an upholstered headboard in a ditsy floral, stripes or checks. Headboards not your thing? If you have the ceiling height, Rose Uniacke’s Suspension Bed Canopy (from £2,700) is an instant room maker.
Get practical
“User-friendly” may not sound sexy, but in Boronkay’s view it’s the most important thing. Sheepskin-covered lounge chairs and lava-stone worktops are all well and good, but if things aren’t easily in reach, or comfortable to the nth degree, then you may as well not bother. It’s why those who have successfully managed to hotelify their home have ample seating options and sidetables. “Too many residential designs just have a coffee table in front of the sofa, which isn’t enough. Sidetables make a lounge,” says Anna Burles, of the west London design studio Run for the Hills.
Meanwhile, Boronkay has seen an increase in clients asking for electric curtains in bedrooms, “which allow for full blackout during sleep and enable waking up to sunshine without having to get out of bed. It’s a luxury in itself.”
Drinks trays are the other hot hotel squeeze. “It replicates the minibar of a boutique hotel — it’s simple to do and obviously less expensive than having a custom home bar designed and made,” Burles says.
Tuck away the TV
Let’s talk tech! The choice for many hotels is the high-end Danish brand Bang & Olufsen. But with its more affordable TVs starting at £6,600, your budget may not quite stretch. In that case any TV is fine … so long as it’s concealed. “We ensure all electronics are hidden, incorporated into antique or Soho Home furniture,” Murray says. Boronkay agrees: “I like to hide them behind artwork, whether it’s concealed within a shelving system like a library shelf or standalone artwork or tapestry on the wall. There are amazing products on the market now where the lifting mechanism is completely invisible. This means that the experience of having to hide the TV isn’t ruined by exposed tracks.”
Light it up
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Avoiding central pendants or spotlights — something any designer worth their salt will hammer home — the best hotels get the lighting just right. “Lamps are the magic ingredient to creating an atmospheric space,” says Nicola Harding, the designer behind the Garden House rooms and restaurant at the Beaverbrook hotel, Surrey, and the Beaverbrook Town House in London. ‘‘You want inviting pools that draw you into different pockets of a room.” Also heed Murray’s advice and use 5 amp lamp sockets to create a single lighting circuit, which means you can turn all lamps on — and off — with a single switch. Don’t overlook the sockets and switches themselves. Corston has a range of bronze, antique brass, polished nickel and even clear switches to show off the wallpaper underneath (from £35). If in doubt always go for a dimmer. “Finishes should be imaginative,” says Boronkay, who prefers lamp cords to be twisted and fabric-covered “in a colour that makes them less visible”.
