When conjuring up your dream home in your mind’s eye, what comes to mind? It might be a sprawling celebrity style mansion, a quaint, olde English cottage, or perhaps a thoroughly modern apartment with breathtaking seaviews.
In Merseyside, it’s something different entirely, and one house has become the talk of the town. A bright pink, Barbie-inspired dream house is set to bring those childhood reveries back to life, and with six bedrooms and a gleaming kitchen, has just gone on the market for £459,000.
With its long, sweeping driveway, boasting a grand fountain at its centre, and a vast hallway featuring a sparkling chandelier overhead, the standard of luxury on offer here is evident before you set foot inside. But it’s not its eye-catching colour or spacious layout that makes this unique home so desirable, and its opulent interiors and sumptuous furnishings are what have truly transformed it into the lavish living space of dreams.
Its secret weapon? Crushed velvet, and plenty of it. The material is something of a theme that runs throughout this family home, featuring on everything from the living room sofas, curtains and even wallpaper.
If there’s one fabric that has the power to really inject a sense of luxury, then soft and tactile velvet is it. Here’s how to use it to your advantage in your own dream home to create a beautiful space to be proud of.
Choose a feature room
The addition of velvet touches to a room can transform its look and feel in an instant. Start with a feature room, and work outwards from there.
As with all textiles, quality goes a long way, so be prepared to spend out on the finest quality velvets money can buy. Use it to create a cosy and opulent living room through the addition of soft velvet cushions and throws – or better yet, go the whole hog, and choose velvet for the sofas and armchairs themselves.
Whilst velvet can work in most rooms, it is best avoided in the dining area and kitchen, as its soft and porous texture doesn’t lend itself well to odours, food and grease. Keep it for the bedroom, sitting room and guest areas for best results.
Bring on the texture
A velvet fabric design adds real texture to upholstery as well as interest, and often works best when combined with simpler fabrics. If you don’t feel confident with making it the main event in a room, then choose chic velvet accent pieces instead.
Keep the design of a room simple, with plain and neutral walls. Doing so allow your more sumptuous and sophisticated pieces to come into their own.
Dream in velvet with the bedroom
No room quite lends itself to luxurious touches like a bedroom. Why not really convey that sense of luxury with a crushed velvet bed? You’d be hard pressed to find another material that doesn’t work well with velvet, so combine it with linen for effortless chic and you’ll be itching to sink into that bed. Bedrooms are also a golden opportunity to instil some real elegance into the home and achieve a natural balance between different materials
Banish curtain hang-ups
If you’re confident enough to go all out with the velvet, then why not opt for a pair of elegant velvet curtains? Lavish and expensive looking, they’re the ultimate expression of luxury. Since it’s possible to make velvet from a range of materials, you can decide the level of shine you want just by choosing the velvet material itself. Silk will give you the very best shine, while cotton won’t let you down either – although the shine is a little softer and more subtle for a slightly more understated look.
Boost the impact of the velvet by lighting the curtains from above. This capitalises upon the reflective nature of velvet, and in darker rooms, has a fantastic effect. The velvet also exerts a softening impact on hard floors and acts as a natural noise dampener, so if you’re in a part of the house in which the cutlery is clanging, cars or motorbikes are roaring by or high heels are clacking, leave it to the velvet to soak up some of it up.
Goodbye velvet curtains… Hello, velvet walls!
Curtains can be something of a minefield when it comes to materials and designs because of the piles and naps that complicate issues. You can sidestep all that inconvenience but still take the luxury of your home to the next level by regaling your walls the gift of velvet.
Not for the faint hearted, a tactile velvet feature wall is a unique way to set your home apart from any other – and better yet, it’s relatively straightforward to achieve. Mount individually upholstered velvet panels to the wall, and you’ll have yourself an impactful feature that is just perfect for inspiring conversations with intrigued guests.
Be careful not to go overboard when it comes to your panel design, though. In a room where patterns abound, you want to keep colour to a minimum to create accents. Stick to block colours, so that the velvet doesn’t clash with patterns, overwhelming anyone and everyone who enters the room.
Velvet is luxury, plain and simple, and when you’re working on your own plush dream house, it’s an essential part of the equation. Versatile and elegant, it’s the perfect choice for everything from sofas and cushions to curtains and walls.
When people come into your home, they won’t just be visiting somewhere comfortable and luxurious; they’ll be visiting someone who has shaped their destiny so they can have the things they want. The dream house really can become a reality with a few simple touches and some bold design choices.
