26 Jan 2022

Let’s face it – some people are snobs. They will critique your home if it does not look fancy, downplay the things that do look nice or even suggest brands that are way beyond your means. While you can’t always afford the luxury that they might be suggesting, you can easily fake something similar.

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Here are some easy ways to make your home look far more expensive without breaking your bank account in two. If you want to fake it, then we have some easy tricks to get you started.

Natural lighting

The more natural light a room gets, the fancier it looks. While some rooms might only get light at certain times of the day (unless you use light tunnels), you can still use this to make sure that certain spaces look professional and tidy at particular times.

Good lighting can also work if you have a lot of shiny decorations, reflecting the light around for a much better and richer atmosphere. How you use the natural lighting depends on how you set up the room, and there is no correct way to bounce it off surfaces or send it into particular corners.

Artificial lighting is not bad, so you can use that quite well too. You just need to be creative about when and where the light shines, as well as how it will look during different levels of day and night lighting. Curtains can also play a major part in how the light enters a room through the windows.

Full Pillows

Filling and overstuffing a pillow can often make them look more expensive, as well as far more comfortable. This is easy enough to do by putting a pillow into a smaller casing than it is meant for, which adds far more volume and prevents the saggy look that you might expect from cheaper ones.

If done right, you can even upholster an old pillow by doing this, allowing you to make it look far fancier without really doing anything at all. If you are feeling brave, you could even do this with something like a beanbag or chair cushion, too.

Be sure not to overdo it with the pillows, or you might create seating that can’t actually seat people properly without removing them. This would mean that they have to toss the pillows onto the ground, which only makes the room look messy and makes tidying up more annoying.

Minimalist Styles

The more you clutter your home, the cheaper and less organized it will look. Even if you have a lot of things to display, you should organize them and make them orderly, rather than scattering them about at random. Expensive decorations can look awful if they are just lazily placed in clumps.

Instead, aim for minimalism. A room that looks clean can help you keep a clear head, which also makes it much easier to focus on what is actually happening – especially if you are working from home while on a video call or trying to have serious conversations in your own home.

Clutter can sometimes be good in certain areas, like on a desk that you work at, but it should not be excessive. Ideally, you do not want to keep anything on the floor, and you should never keep a bin over-filled or a storage container clearly packed with more than it can hold.

Dark Colours

Darker colors, from pitch black to a deep red velvet, can all look very rich and expensive. Most of them are not, but their historically high prices have stuck with us into modern society, and that means that they are perceived as being valuable.

Using deep reds, purples, black tones, and similarly dark colors can all have a major impact on the way that a room looks, so do not be afraid to use them liberally with whatever furniture or decorations you prefer. Just be sure not to overdo the dark colors, or you might spoil the design.

Remember that this can also depend on your lighting. A dark room with poor lighting can be really hard to navigate, but if you choose lighting that sets a certain mood, you might actually be able to use the dim lights as a benefit. It is all about the atmosphere that you create.

That is not to say that you can’t use bright colors at all – there are a lot of situations where a bright design can look amazing and offer something unique that you would not get otherwise. You just need to use both of them in moderation and be careful to not lean into a single color too much.

Large Curtains

Curtains are a very powerful option for decorating your home and one that can have a huge impact on what a room looks like. Not only can they control the light levels well, but they can add some more style to a room and make it feel more spacious. 

There is no need to go into highly patterned curtains unless you want to – the glow from the outside world can work wonders on even a basic solid-color design. If the curtains reach the floor, then you can also do some creative things with how they fall against the wall or what they are framed by.

Using curtains well can lead to a huge amount of different design options, and all of them can look excellent in nearly any space. As an added benefit, a larger curtain can look way more expensive, even though it might not actually cost that much more than a smaller choice.