10 Designer Tricks That Make Any Room Look Expensive

You know that feeling when a room technically looks nice, but it just doesn't feel finished. You buy the new decor, you paint the walls, maybe you even buy a new piece of furniture, but the room just feels slightly off. The truth is it's usually not about buying more stuff. It's usually about putting into practice a few design principles that a lot of us don't even know. So in today's video, I'm going to be sharing with you 10 designer tricks that instantly elevate a room. They're simple principles that make any space feel calm, put together and designer. And I'm going to start with the one that completely changed how I look at rooms. One of the quickest ways to make a room feel cheaper than it actually is, is to use art that is too small of a scale for this space. If in doubt, buy a bigger piece of art. This is the same principle with area rugs, if in doubt, buy a bigger area rug. And this is something that I definitely did in the past. And so many people do this at first, you see a cute piece of art, you don't measure it, you kind of imagine that it's going to look good in your space. But when you stick it on the wall, it looks like it's floating in the middle of nowhere. It's not connected to any of the furniture in this space, and it just simply looks too small for the room. And most designers are almost always going to go bigger with their art than what feels comfortable, especially when you're doing something above a large sectional sofa above a bed in a room where there's quite a bit of white space. When you scale the art proportionally, the room is instantly going to feel elevated. And that leads me to my next designer trick. And it's one of the common misconceptions about elevated looking spaces. People think, okay, we need more stuff to make this room look more high end. And actually the opposite is true. And I have learned this the hard way in the past on my journey to becoming an interior designer. When a room feels luxurious, it actually usually means that there's a lot of breathing room in the space. So quite a bit of that white space, that empty space, a shelf or a side table might only have three objects on it. Maybe we're just using that triangle rule, tall, medium, small, a console table might just have a lamp, a stack of books, a piece of artwork to ground everything. The negative space around pieces is what's going to make those pieces stand out more and make them feel more special. And this felt so weird to me at first, as someone who really loves decorating, starting to edit my surfaces and take things away, it felt really weird at first, but now I realize how the principle of white space just adds so much chicness to the rooms that I design. When you do this, your rooms are going to start to feel more relaxing, calmer, and instantly more designer. Now this is one of those tiny adjustments that designers use constantly. Most of us hang our curtains or our drapes too low on the wall. And when we raise the curtain rod up, that's instantly going to make your room feel bigger and your ceilings feel taller, which in turn makes your space feel more grand and more expensive. Sometimes hanging your curtain rods, even a few inches below the ceiling, maybe six to eight inches above your window frame is going to make a huge difference in how your room feels. And if you're worried about finding curtains that are long enough for this trick, raising your curtain rods, one of my favorite places to find long curtains is Ikea. They often have 96 inch or 108 inch lengths. This is one of the highest impact things that you can do in your space. And it usually only takes 15 to 20 minutes. Now lighting is one of those things that can affect the entire feel of your home. One of the mistakes that I see people doing often is using the wrong temperature of light bulbs in your fixtures. When you use a cooler temperature of light bulb, your room is going to feel a little more clinical. When you use a warmer temperature of light bulb, about 2700 K is the perfect temperature. In my opinion, your room instantly feels more inviting and cozy. And that's one of the easiest changes in this whole video. Simply grab some bulbs that are the correct temperature and swap them out. This is especially effective in places like your wall sconces in your bedroom, your bedroom lamps, your living room lamps, floor lamps, side table lamps, et cetera. And I love the feeling of turning off all the overhead lights in the evening and turning off those warm bulb lamps in my living room and just relaxing. And using warm toned lighting is actually one of the principles that I teach in my interior styling course, the cozy formula. And it's one of my favorites. Now here's something that designers obsess about that most of us don't even think about. And that is making sure that you hide any visual clutter that doesn't coordinate with your space. By visual clutter, I mean things like cords, remote controls, charging cables, and individually these things are small, but when you have a whole bunch of them in your space, it's going to make your space feel messy and cluttered. But when you hide these things, it's going to give your room that nice, calm, serene feeling. So some of the tricks that I like to use are a cable box like this one I found on Amazon for my charging cords. I like to use decorative baskets for things like remotes, et cetera, put them on the coffee table. And I love baskets on the floor as well. Also think about two in one furniture. So side tables with drawers and ottoman that has storage inside. These are really helpful things to have in your space to hide that visual clutter. Now here's the thing. Everything I have talked about in this video so far are small adjustments that you can make in your space. But these next few tricks are when you're going to see that shift from a nice to designer. And this next one is something that I actually didn't learn for years. When designers design spaces, they rarely use the material one time. It's often repeated multiple times throughout the space. My favorite number to use items in a space is three. So I like to use, say, a metallic tone like brass three times in my room. So maybe in my kitchen, it's my brass handles, it's some decor, it's the rail above my stove. This can also apply to color. So maybe I want to use some green accents in my space. I'm going to use them on a throw pillow, some faux greenery, and maybe in some artwork. And if you repeat textures, patterns, colors, metals, at least three times in your space, it's going to make your room feel cohesive and high end. This principle also applies to wood tones in your home. And it can also apply to textures like shiny objects, maybe have three shiny objects in your space. Without this repetition, your room can feel kind of like a mishmash of collected items instead of something that's been thoughtfully designed. A lot of inexpensive decor is really lightweight. So lightweight as in its actual weight is light, but also visually light. And one trick that makes a room feel more expensive is adding something with a heavy visual weight or a physical heaviness into your space. So these are items like a nice thick wooden table, like a really heavy brass lamp base, maybe a marble or a stone tray, really any object that feels substantial. And if you're worried about having to spend a lot of cash on these items, my favorite place to find substantial weighted items like this is the thrift store. So just in a place like value village, you can find some nice old mid century piece that solid wood that feels nice and heavy and substantial and rich in your space. This is going to anchor your room and make everything feel so much grounded. And then you can mix and match lighter materials throughout your room. Another designer habit is never, ever relying on just one light source in your space. Most of us think about just that ceiling light. You always want to layer your lighting. So have a ceiling light, have a table light, and then maybe have some sort of accent lighting like some twinkle lights or candles. Having these three different sources of light is going to make your room feel cozy, layered, designer, elevated. And it's also practical because you can turn them on and off as needed, depending on the task that you're doing. Especially in the evening, these layers of light are going to make your space feel like it has so much depth in it. It creates these beautiful shadows instantly makes a space feel warmer and more elevated. Now every designer room usually has one space for your eye to land on first. And this is called the focal point. So maybe in your living room, this is going to be a fireplace with a darker stone than the rest of your space in the kitchen. Maybe this is going to be a range hood. We DIY'd this one a couple of years ago, and I love how it looks in the kitchen. It could also be a large piece of art or maybe a beautiful console table. Without having this one focal point, your eyes are going to wander and really not know where to land. So always think about that point first and then design everything around that. Now the most important trick that designers use, and this is the one that instantly is going to elevate any space, is that they design around real life, not just aesthetics. When you're designing a space, you always want to ask yourself the question first, what am I actually doing in this space? What do I want to use this space for? That's going to make you add a throw blanket to where somebody sits and wants warmth. You're going to add a lamp where somebody is wanting to read at night. That's going to help you decide on which materials to use in your space. Maybe you have pets and kids, so you want to go for a vinyl plank floor. Maybe your home isn't as high use, so you're going to go for some hardwood. Rooms feel expensive when they're actually lived in and when you design them for the way that you live in them. Because when your home works for how you actually move in it from day to day, that is the absolute most important thing. And you stop really noticing the decor and you start realizing just simply how amazing your home feels to live in it. So let me know down in those comments below which of these design tips that you currently use in your home or which one do you want to try to incorporate? I would love to hear. Let me know down in those comments below. And if you want more tricks on how to make your home feel instantly cozy and chic, I have this video right here where I'm sharing 50 hacks on how to make your home cozy and I'll see you there.