Incorporating Luxury Materials in Elegant Interior Design

Make your new property reflect your style and aesthetic with luxury materials. Houston-area homes are spacious and offer beautifully elegant layouts, scenic backdrops, and temperate environments throughout the seasons. Whether you love creating outdoor living spaces full of comfortable, luxurious features or you want to entirely remodel your new home's interior with natural materials, the possibilities are endless. Start exploring your luxury design aesthetic by finding the right materials, styles, and color palette that suits your lifestyle and Houston home. This guide presents an overview of the most trendy — and timeless — luxury materials that are fundamental elements in elegant design aesthetics, and some of the best ways to incorporate them into any luxury property.

Before you begin designing the specific details for every room, consider all the different natural and luxury materials that make up today's most lavish and distinguished design possibilities. Whether you're thinking about accents you can layer on top of the existing fixtures and furnishings or you're planning an in-depth remodeling project, these are some of the top materials to consider:

Hardwood fixtures and furnishings are a timeless choice that can fit well within any unique aesthetic, whether you want an airy tropical feel or have a traditional, mid-century, or colonial taste. High-quality millwork is often reserved for the most luxurious woods that are hard, long-lasting, and have a naturally unique beauty. Think options like mahogany, with its rich color and durability, or teak wood for its superior strength (even when used in humid spaces like bathrooms or around exterior swimming pools).

Metal is a fixture in every design aesthetic, but the particulars regarding the color, hue, shine, and finish make all the difference. Rather than selecting brassy and shiny, highly reflective metals, many of today's most artful options focus on matte metals or metals with a subtle hint of luster. The details also matter with metal, so consistency across multiple spaces throughout your home can really elevate the final image.

Marble fixtures have long been a timeless trend across eras and countries, with the brilliant gleam of this natural stone being a hallmark of luxe interiors. Today, you can select from a wide range of different stones for different surfaces. But because they've become so popular, truly luxurious spaces opt for more daring marble and stone materials. Look for rich colors, vivid veins across the stone, and other unique elements that turn the surfaces from a rich backdrop to a focal point.

The three categories of elegant materials—wood, metal, and stone—give homeowners a diverse palette and set of interior design tools. From earthy interior design aesthetics to chic and modern fixtures, you can capture your unique personality and showcase the beauty of these natural elements. Consider these tips as you begin to plan your remodel:

Hardwood floors themselves are a luxury. You can work exclusively with real-wood options for floors that exude warmth and elegance, with fundamental wood choices and artful stains that align with the rest of your decor. You can also select artificial alternatives: vinyl flooring panels mimic real wood's look and surface texture with increasing accuracy, and wood-look ceramic tile offers another durable, maintenance-free alternative that is more high-end than vinyl. Have this flooring installed throughout your home with as few transitions as possible for an open-layout feel across the entire space.

When you want to create an atmosphere of graceful style, especially in areas with hard surfaces like kitchens and bathrooms, then choosing the proper stone material is a must. Most upgraded homes today already have countertops made from granite, quartz, or marble, and many of the selected stones are in varying shades of white, gray, and brown. To make a statement through your home's sophisticated style, select an option that is more unusual, such as:

This is a solid home renovation tip for every style of home: ensure the hardware matches. If you have a matte bronze as your kitchen cabinet handles, then it generally makes sense to have a matte bronze for your hinges and kitchen faucet. But you can really tie your home's design together by bringing that matte bronze into your bathrooms, laundry room, and mud room. To elevate your home's style, you can also choose one or two fixture features that can be a contrasting metal, such as a silver or gold inlay, as long as it's chosen deliberately.

Lighting fixtures are one of the most important elements for completely transforming your home's interior design. Consider both the number and style. Depending on your budget and the extent of the remodeling project, you can install additional lighting. Initial construction layouts provide the minimal required lighting for a home layout, but additional wired fixtures can remove shadows, enhance working spaces, and better highlight decor elements.

You can also deepen your home's interior aesthetic with new lighting fixtures. Opt for larger features, especially ones with crystal elements like chandeliers. Whenever possible, cross-apply these material tips: look for chandeliers that have both crystal and a metal that complements the space's other metal fixtures.

When it's time for a kitchen renovation, there's a lot you can do to transform the environment simply by changing the material and style of the cabinets, even if the layout stays completely the same. Choose modern style elements, enjoy updated hardware such as soft-close cabinets and drawers, and extend the cabinets' length to the ceilings to increase the sense of grandeur and height.

All of these custom touches and luxury materials can truly elevate your home's aesthetic before you even begin to add in furnishings, custom upholstery, accents, and other interior design elements. At Future Real Estate, we help homebuyers across the Houston area - particularly the Memorial area - find beautiful properties that they can live in immediately, remodel with custom changes, and happily live in for years to come. Reach out today to begin your home search journey.