Resort-style living spaces give you the very best of relaxed luxury, where every aspect goes into bringing you a continual vacation experience inside your own home. The design style behind resort living takes its inspiration from luxury resort hotels, spa retreats, and resort destinations worldwide.
The goal is to bring together open living areas, seamless indoor-outdoor transitions, rich color schemes, and cleverly integrated amenities that serve to facilitate relaxation and entertainment. Despite its luxurious appeal, creating resort-style living spaces doesn’t always work; unless you know how to avoid certain design mistakes.
Overlooking the Importance of Outdoor-Indoor Flow
Homeowners need to understand how to establish a seamless connection between interior and exterior areas, like you find in luxury resorts. For instance, when you visit the best destinations with high-class resorts, such as the country clubs in Palm Springs, one aspect that immediately hits your senses is how the architecture and interior design complement the outdoor setting.
These establishments clearly show that resort living isn’t confined to interior walls but seamlessly extends into outdoor spaces. For instance, the Italian-inspired architecture, with open courtyards in these communities shows how to make maximum usage of the deserted surroundings by clearly combining indoor spaces with outdoor areas effectively.
The financial costs associated with ignoring this principle can be quite high, too. Many homeowners ignore the integration with the outdoors in their interior designs and end up spending thousands of dollars on corrective renovations. To avoid making such an expensive mistake, you must:
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Start your design project by assessing the relationships between each interior room and outdoor settings.
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Opt for sliding glass walls for the entire room to create a seamless connection with the outdoors.
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Choose flooring that seamlessly bridges the two settings, like large porcelain tiles that mimic the look of natural stones.
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Choose matching color schemes for the interior and outdoor settings, so that transitioning from one setting to another appears more like a natural progression.
Sacrificing Function for Fashion in Material Selection
Another common mistake involves choosing between aesthetics and function when selecting materials and finishes. You may feel tempted to choose dramatic, highly attractive materials, but it’s important to pay attention to durability and ease of maintenance. Top-end resorts spend a lot on materials that last a long time, knowing that any wear, staining, or damage would immediately detract from the luxurious ambiance they so carefully try to establish.
Professional resort designers overcome these challenges by using fabrics that combine beauty and durability. Performance fabrics can now replicate the look and feel of silk, linen, and even velvet while being stain- and fade-resistant. Similarly, engineered stones allow for the beauty of natural stones but resist staining and etching.
When designing your resort-inspired area, do some research on the maintenance requirements for each type of material you settle on, then determine if it's something you can truly maintain for a long time in an area devoted to relaxation and entertainment. If feeling confused, consult professionals to help you with hospitality-inspired designs and make sure you pick materials that last long even when exposed to harsh environments.
Neglecting Proper Lighting Design and Layering
Perhaps the single most overlooked mistake in designing resort-style living spaces is neglecting the lighting design. Many homeowners pay little attention to lighting, installing ordinary light fixtures that only serve for lighting without considering other factors, like light quality, positioning, and control options.
Luxury resorts don’t make these mistakes and hire professional light designers who recognize that correct lighting is more than making an environment visible – it sets moods, emphasizes architectural design, serves specific functions, and allows spaces to transform depending on the time of day. To avoid the issue, you should:
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Add dimmer switches on each circuit so that light levels can be set according to different times of day and activities.
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Use LED striplights in architectural details such as coffered ceilings, floating shelves, and toe kicks for a subtle impact.
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Use outdoor lighting carefully to illuminate paths safely while using landscape lighting to highlight architectural detailing and planting schemes.
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Think carefully about color temperature, choosing warm 2700K to 3000K light that creates an inviting, warm atmosphere rather than cool, harsh light commonly found in office settings.
Endnote
Creating genuine resort living areas takes more than just thoughtfully integrating quality materials because it’s also essential to consider little things that separate true luxury from an “attempt” at luxury. By avoiding these mistakes and learning from the strategies used in luxury resort destinations, it’s possible to create a luxury vacation experience in your daily routine.
