Intentionally owning fewer things is the perfect foundation for adding luxury to your life. When you get rid of the excess, what’s left over can finally speak.

People often confuse luxury with excess, opulence and the unnecessary, but luxury is an experience. At its core, true luxury satisfies our need for comfort and safety: a path to a regulated nervous system. The thing that luxury hotels, resorts, homes, and experiences have in common, is that they make the people who invest in them feel like they can finally relax. This means being disturbed less frequently, reducing the need for decision making, and creating a space in which someone can be fully present. 

My work as a user-experience researcher and designer has made it so I can’t help but reverse engineer how these luxury experiences are crafted, and then apply them to my own life so I can intentionally live in luxury every day (not just when I stay at a luxury hotel or eat at a high-end restaurant).

In this post I want to share one of my observations about crafting luxury experiences and how it can be applied to any space to make the people in it feel more present and abundant on a daily basis: by engaging the senses. 

Sight 

This is the most obvious one because we it’s modeled the most, on social media and tv for example. Colors, shapes, materials, and light affect how the eyes take in a space and how we end up feeling about it. And in it. The key to luxury, in visuals, is balance.

Visual vibes 101: for a futuristic and modern space use cool colors like blue, gray, black, white, and silver. Use shapes with sharp angles and straight lines. Use non-porous materials like metal, glass, and plastic. And use lighting in a way that planes, surfaces, and angles are emphasized, like with light strips. Think space station vibes.

On the opposite end of the spectrum: for a rustic and cozy space use warm colors like red, orange, brown, beige, and gold. Use rounded shapes and intricate details. Use porous materials like wood, fabric, and leather. And use lighting in a way that illuminates and highlights specific areas, like reading lamps and candles. Think cottage vibes.

These are two opposite ends of the spectrum, and totally valid to enjoy on their own. When we look at luxury visuals though, there is this gorgeous balance point where you choose one of the sides, and then add in elements from the other. This makes the space feel more understated. 

How does simplifying your life fit into this? Clutter can often throw off the balance and peace you aim to create. Clutter adds shapes, colors, and materials that might not be aligned with the vision for the space. So by reducing clutter, you get more control over the visual experience you want.

In practice:

• Declutter to remove unwanted visual noise
• Decide on what side of the visual vibes spectrum you want to be on
• Assess your space and see what kind of colors, shapes, materials, and lights, might need to be added/removed/adjusted to create that luxurious balance

Touch

Of the five senses, this is the first to signal whether something is truly luxurious or not. This is the sense that’s going to tell us about quality, and good quality is luxury (especially in today’s world). We often don’t give our sense of touch enough power because we are all too busy focusing on what things look like. This is a shame because it has such a huge impact on our experience.

Consider the feel of high quality sheets that aren’t rough or make you feel sweaty, chairs that feel supportive and don’t wobble, buttons and light switches that feel solid, and doors or drawers that open smoothly and don’t jam. To learn how to infuse your daily life with luxury you have to close your eyes and feel into your body. Start noticing what makes things feel sturdy and supportive. Start noticing whether your fingers or clothes catch on rough fabrics or splinters on the bottom of wooden tables. 

Noticing and observing using touch is not just a great way to learn what is comfortable and luxurious to you, aka what you should probably get more of in your life. It’s also an excellent way to practice being present. A way of grounding yourself and getting out of your head. When you touch things and pay attention to their weight, shape, and material, you take a moment to move your attention outside of yourself without consuming media, it's a mini meditation.

In practice:

• Start experiencing the different spaces you are in using your sense of touch. Notice how your body is supported by furniture, how materials feel against your skin and your clothes, and what things like doors, drawers, and switches teach you about their build quality by interacting with them.
• In your own space, observe what small changes you can make to improve your experience (It might be as simple as tightening a screw on a door or replacing a pillowcase or throw blanket)

Sound

Luxury in sound comes in two parts, eliminating what you don’t want to hear and adding in what you do. As someone who is easily distracted, getting the sound in a space right is really important to me. 

Let’s start with elimination: Certain things can make unwanted sounds when you interact with them due to lack of maintenance, their build quality, or the materials used. The most obvious examples of this are creaky floorboards, doors, chairs and beds, or how (faux) leather squeaks. This usually comes down to maintenance and can often be fixed after a quick Google search or by a professional.

Another way sound can affect your experience is through bad acoustics. Acoustics influence how sound travels through a space, and bad acoustics can be identified by how “echo-y” a space is. To reduce echoes in a space, you can add more textiles in the form of rugs, curtains, acoustic paneling, or textile covered furniture like sofas and beds. Textiles absorb sounds rather than let it bounce off back into the space, reducing unnecessary noise.

Then there are the sounds that come from outside the space: neighbors, vehicles, planes, and construction. Unfortunately, there is not always a whole lot that can be done to prevent outside sounds from coming in, especially if you’re renting, in old buildings, in a city. It’s a bit of a tradeoff. Outside of heavy construction to soundproof a space, the only other options are to fill up gaps in walls and windows, and use the techniques from setting up the acoustics.

Once you've reduced the sounds you don't want to hear, you can focus on what you put back in. I love enjoying silence, it really helps regulate my nervous system and clear my head. On the flip side though, I love carefully curating playlists to create the exact experience and emotions I want. Intentionally creating atmospheres in my space is one of the ways in which I romanticize my life. I have playlists for: slow mornings, sunny lazy afternoons, sunny active afternoons, rainy days, really hot days, moments where I need to wallow, evenings that need a cool vibe, evenings that need a classy vibe, the list goes on.

In practice:

• Do your best to remove the sounds you don't want in your space by fixing or replacing creaky and squeaky objects, adding textiles to help influence acoustics, and trying to insulate against outside noises.
• Then immerse yourself in the silence or curate playlists to create intentional emotions and experiences for the space.

Scent

The scent of a space instantly affects your experience. It can elevate or lower how you feel about the space, the people in it, and your time spent there. Scent is powerfully linked to our memories and emotions. We all have certain scents that instantly transport us to a person, place, or time, and others that instantly put us in a certain mood (like spas for example). This is why luxury hotels pay so much for their proprietary scents; not only are they crafting your experience and emotions while you are there, they are also preparing you for your next visit. They want you to come back and instantly feel at home. Being intentional about the scent in our own space is another way to craft the experience we want to have in life. 

Just like with sound, the most important part is to get rid of unwanted smells first. Masking smells rarely works, you just end up having unpleasant mixes. Opening windows to air the place out, taking out the trash, and cleaning the bathroom and kitchen are the first line of action when getting rid of unwanted smells. Fabric is notorious for clinging onto smells too, so cleaning things like rugs, carpets, curtains, beds, throws, and sofas will make a huge difference. My top products for getting rid of smells: baking soda, vinegar, or activated charcoal depending on what is smelly. 

Then the fun part: intentionally adding scent in. This is obviously not a requirement. Just like with sound you can enjoy the absence of scent too, or enjoy whatever smells come in through the open window. There are so many things to choose from like candles, diffusers, incense, hand soaps, and room sprays. Each type has its pros and cons. I’m an incense kind of person most of the year, but from September to December I switch to candles for a bit more of that holiday experience. 

When choosing your scents, pay attention to the mood and experience you are trying to create in the space. Deeper and rich notes such as amber, sandalwood, or jasmine create a cozy or moody atmosphere. Fruity, green, and floral scents are a little more uplifting, and then there are scents that will invoke specific times of year or spaces like cinnamon, cloves, peppermint, and eucalyptus. What sets luxury scent-makers apart is that they have the ability to combine opposite ends of the spectrum and make them work together beautifully (similar to what I covered in “sight” above).

With scent, and any of the senses really, it’s important to not go for something overpowering. If you can’t enjoy your food, are getting a headache, or god-forbid you’re having trouble breathing; stop using the scent, reduce how much you use at a given time, or how often you’re adding it to the room. Part of luxury is creating a space in which you can be fully present, so if a scent becomes distracting, it’s not the right one! 

In practice:

• Do your best to remove the scents you don't want in your space by removing trash, cleaning surfaces and fabrics, and opening your windows to air everything out.
• Then, either enjoy the neutral state of the space, or curate an intentional experience with scents that are aligned with your vision for the space (and your life).

Taste

When I first started observing how our experience of a space is influenced by our senses I paused for a moment when I got to  taste. I remembered an old Japanese game show where the contestants had to walk through a room and identify which of the furniture pieces were made of chocolate and confirm by biting it. That’s what I pictured, someone biting a table leg! But that all changed when I went to the “Aesop” store for the first time. When I walked into the space I was offered a small cup of tea to sip as I walked around. It happened at “Rituals” too, and then I started noticing it more and more. 

While there is an element of making people shop or come back more because they got a “free thing,” it did get me thinking about the flavor that was offered and how it affected my experience of the space. The tea at Aesop was a peppermint that made me feel refreshed and relaxed at the same time. As I walked through the store, they burned a moody and rich incense. The colors of the space were toned down, and the lights were diffused. You’re encouraged to try out the products so you’re getting a tactile experience too. The combination of each of those elements put me in the most wonderful headspace: calm confidence.

Taste is the final piece of the puzzle when it comes to creating a luxury experience. Whether it's a mango by the pool on vacation, or a morning coffee while reading a book in the living room, or a peppermint tea while shopping around; the things we consume in a space affect our experience of it and to a certain degree, how we view ourselves. Start considering how you are detracting or adding to the experience of your space through the things you're consuming.  

In practice:

• Consider what tastes you don’t want. Sometimes it’s as simple as hydrating, brushing your teeth, or eating an apple to neutralize any tastes you don’t want in your mouth.
• Then become a taste curator: high quality herbal teas are one of my favorite ways to play with crafting these experiences because they are sugar and caffeine free, so you’re free to fully focus on flavor without it affecting your sleep or appetite. 

Final thoughts

Instagrammability has such a strong influence over our purchase and design decisions. This over-reliance on the visual side of design steers us towards creating spaces that end up feeling “off,” and when a space feels off, we try to fix it by buying more or replacing stuff, but never getting to the core of the problem—so we try again. It’s a vicious cycle.

By not honoring our embodied experience we are doing ourselves a disservice. Moving away from focusing only on what can be seen and immersing yourself with all senses creates alignment, a regulated nervous system, and true comfort. Designing for the senses will elevate your space and life so much, it's a quiet luxury I have come to love.