Hotel Chic

What is Hotel Chic?

Hotel Chic, inspired by the new book Hotel Chic at Home by Sara Bliss, is the practice of using hotel décor as inspiration for your own home. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. While you might not think of them as the centre point of modern design trends, hotels do rely a lot on how they look and feel, and spend a lot on interior designers who put real effort into making every room look beautiful.

In many cases, hotels have the same problems as your own home: lack of space, strange corners, the need to feel comfortable and budget concerns. So there’s a lot that can be learned from the choices they make, and adapted to your own home.

Using Hotel Chic in Your Home

The idea of Hotel Chic is to learn from how hotels make use of colour, space and furniture to make the most of the room they have. According to Sara Bliss a lot of it comes down to confidence and making bold choices: vivid colours and large flourishes where you might not expect them create a sense of uniqueness and identity that can be otherwise hard to find. When you make bold choices, your home stands out and that’s a design choice in itself.

Part of it also comes down to practicality. Hotels want guests to get the most use out of each room possible, and so many of the choices they make are practical as well as aesthetically pleasing. A stool in the bedroom provides somewhere to sit briefly when putting socks and shoes on in the morning. You might want something similar in your bedroom, or perhaps in your hallway instead.

Comfort and luxury are of course big parts of Hotel Chic. Hotels want you to feel comfortable and that your money has been well spent. Making the same choices at home can add that touch of luxury, and make you happy with your choices.

Why Not to Use Hotel Chic

Is Hotel Chic always the right choice to make though? Not always.

Hotels don’t tend to go for the modern, minimalist styles that you might choose for your own home. Bold, colourful choices can sit pleasantly alongside minimalist décor, but they can also ruin the overall effect and detract from the beauty of the room rather than add to it.

Hotels also don’t allow guests to take great pride in ownership of their décor. At House of Oak, ownership of one’s home décor is incredibly important to us. When you’re buying a new piece of furniture from our Hampshire oak furniture range, for example, you’re not just buying a look; you’re investing in furniture for your future. It’s not just about looking good in the moment, its about lasting a lifetime – the personality of our oak furniture comes from a sense of age and tradition that Hotel Chic just can’t match.

Blending Styles

Stop! That doesn’t mean that the two styles can’t meet each other, of course. Many of our ranges can work well in a Hotel Chic home. Picture a New Hampshire Oak Larder Unit for instance. Closed, it fits in with any décor, simple or extravagant. If you really want to add a touch of luxury, though, you can fill it with wines, meats, crackers and dried foods and put them all on display with the open cabinet when entertaining.

Or imagine this Oak Storage Unit with Coat Racks, perfect for the hallway, with that quick seat for helping you slipping your shoes on and off that we mentioned before. Functional, extravagant but also a blend of traditional and contemporary style that will fit in any home at any time, and last you more than a lifetime.

As with any design trend, it’s important to consider what works for your home and what doesn’t. It’s especially important to think about how it works with long lasting oak furniture pieces, which are designed to stay with you forever.