The latest high-spec interior trends for your home
Bragworthy home improvements among ultra-high net worth homeowners are far more inventive than ever before. Think a year-round indoor kitchen garden or a custom soundtrack for the country estate.
What ultra-high net worth homeowners want this year can be summed up in two words: surprise and delight. Forget a spathroom (a bathroom-spa hybrid) or an at-home cycle studio. The bragworthy home improvements of the moment are rarer and far more inventive. Think a year-round kitchen garden growing inside your mountain escape, an indoor slide for your holiday home or a custom soundtrack for the country estate. These are the opulent property trappings to swank about.
1. The indoor slide
Can you think of a better way to make an entrance than zipping down a slide? It’s the architectural feature that brings a bit of the playground to everyday life, a hit of nostalgic joy every time you dodge the stairs and slip down the chute instead. Mrs Prada has one in her studio, as did Ian Malouf’s Palm Beach waterfront home. Splinterworks, best known as purveyors of the sexiest stainless-steel pool slides (and if you doubt a slide can be sexy, have a look at their Orchid), has recently designed an indoor chute for a Foster + Partners house. It provides a link between the mezzanine and the downstairs dining area, and is the very finest means of arriving at breakfast.
2. A haute horsebox
The trend continues for trickling luxurious interior design into ever more areas of life. Decorators and architects at Thorp Design have long been used to designing multiple homes for their clients, as well as yacht interiors. Philippa Thorp has now been called upon to deck out a horsebox. “The horsebox is a large, solid van when you’re driving on the road,” she explains. “Then when you park, a full kitchen and sitting room extend out on either side to create a spacious living area. This client spends large amounts of time at equestrian events, which can last months on end, so she needed this lorry to operate as a home.” Thorp chose a pale palette for the interior, with wood floors. “The client wanted a softness and luxury to the space, so we used cream Scottish nappa leather, like you’d have in a Bentley, for all of the furniture.”
3. Barbecue deluxe
The concept of a “wildkitchen” came prominently to light in David Beckham’s eponymous Netflix doco, shot at his Cotswolds residence. This was followed by a fetching cameo in Guy Ritche’s aristo crime caper The Gentlemen, where incarcerated drug baron Bobby Glass is served Kobe beef cooked on the world’s grandest grill, albeit while doing time behind bars. As it turns out, the curtained and canopied walk-in barbecue-cum-dining room featured in both instances was in fact the work of the filmmaker, who has long had a penchant for outdoor entertaining. Ritchie designed the prototype for the heated table set-up for his Ashcombe House home near Salisbury in the UK to prevent his wife from sliding off to bed early as temps dropped. Thanks to Ritchie’s WildKitchen design, costing up to £300,000 ($580,000) for the premium model, legs can now be warmed while dinner cooks, as the barbecue table’s Scottish lamb’s wool skirt holds in the heat from the firebox.
4. Hay. It’s not just for horses
Not only is Estelle Manor the luxury Oxfordshire hotel that’s challenging Soho Farmhouse for the crown of coolest members’ club in the Cotswolds, but it is also in possession of a new wellness trope: the hay sauna. The sauna features baskets filled with natural English hay from the farm next door, which is collected daily and heated to between 70°C to 100°C. It comes hot on the heels (sorry) of the unveiling of hay relaxation rooms at the Raffles penthouse in Dubai. The super-penthouse R1 on the Palm Jumeirah occupies the top three levels of Raffles The Palm Dubai Residences, and the rooms – where the relaxer reclines on warm, aromatic hay – are part of a suite of therapeutic features, including a cryogenic area and minigolf garden.
5. Superior soundscaping
This could be the year to bring music into your rooms, in the same way you scent your interiors. Peter Adjaye, the sound artist behind Music for Architecture, creates soundtracks for specific buildings, including the Ghanaian home of his architect brother, David Adjaye. The building is a mud house surrounded by acres of farmland and forest, thatched in dried straw, and its soundscape includes West African musicians, drums and synthesisers. The design process is similar to creating a mood board for an interior: Adjaye meets the homeowners, ideally face-to-face in the spaces for which they seek the soundscape. “We would discuss what musical palettes they want to represent in their private space. We would incorporate field recordings that were part of that set of emotions or that set of memories that will be evoked by their very own soundscape. The soundscape will continually evolve in the space and be different each time they enter, as it would incorporate several palettes that would interact with each other at different points.” Those seeking custom curation closer to home look to international music consultancy Playlister, whose corporate clients range from LA’s Chateau Marmont to London’s Chiltern Firehouse and Sydney’s Icebergs Dining Room and Bar. “Personal music programming became a growth area for us during lockdown,” says Playlister’s Sydney-based director Dan Lywood. “We have a number of private clients who employ us to look after their music collection across a range of properties and leisure craft in the same way that one might engage an interior designer or fashion stylist.”
6. Winter kitchen gardens
By which we mean a year-round garden in the kitchen, from which you can readily source fresh greens. Audrey Carden of Carden Cunietti is working on a chalet in Verbier, where the owners have asked for an Evogro LED-lit hydroponic system. The cabinets are more usually specified by professional chefs, including the kitchens at The Ritz and Claridge’s London, for microgreens, salad leaves and herbs, but this couple (and their two teenage children) follow a healthy eating regimen that demands plentiful plants. “They are very much into organic food and this will cover them in the snow season,” she says.
7. Personal dry cleaning
You’ve set aside a dedicated room for hair and make-up, with all the latest LED light beauty gadgets and organic hair and skincare products. If personal grooming has been taken in-house, why are you still handing over your most delicate and precious clothing to an outside professional who will clean it with chemical nasties? In a recent London project, Audrey Carden incorporated a Swiss system for clothes care called V-Zug, and predicts that a steam-based, chemical-free dry-cleaning station will soon be a coveted addition to every smart dressing room. LG’s Styler Steam Clothing Care System has also made that at-home convenience a reality at Harvey Norman.
8. An at-home fromagerie
There’s little more vexing than fridgey cheese, all dried out and much too cold, which is why a separate cheese larder is becoming a sought-after feature. Once you have picked out your cheese – Tasmanian or French? Cow, goat or sheep? Maybe a washed rind? – tasted and taken home your selection, you need to keep your dairy products at the right temperature and importantly, at a consistent one. For most varieties, this will be colder than room temperature, but warmer than a fridge. If cheese is stored too cold, the active bacteria will become dormant and the cheese will not mature any further. Now, how do you avoid this new and very necessary piece of kitchen kit becoming just another boring kitchen cupboard. Alex Beaugeard, the managing director of UK kitchen studio Lanserring, has created a glowing-pink cheese storage, using backlit Himalayan rock salt. “We were asked by a London client to explore the perfect conditions for maturing cheese prior to consumption,” Beaugeard says. “We created a stone-clad environment, which keeps the contents a few degrees cooler than room temperature due to the thermal mass of stone. We lined the enclosure with tiles of Himalayan rock salt because it helps to remove moisture from the environment, thus accelerating the development of the flavours and textures in the cheese. Aesthetically, we were able to use backlighting to create a harmonious pink glow.” Because even Parmigiano Reggiano looks pretty in pink.
9. Safe keeping
It makes perfect sense for any serious watch and jewellery collector to invest in ways to protect one’s treasures. Julian Farren-Price, owner and managing director of luxury retailer J Farren-Price, says demand is huge for top-of-the range safes from German brand Buben & Zorweg, which range from $70,000 to $220,000. “We have sold numerous from each of the Orion, Turbo, Vision and Infinity ranges. Not to mention their stand-alone smaller storage units.” Farren-Price says trends in home renovation are a driving factor in this popularity and the safes can be fully customised, from the colour of leather to the internal layout, with extras such as a humidor, alarm system and even bulletproof glass also available. “The bespoke options available are endless,” says Farren-Price. “We have even had clients send their architect to Germany to meet with the bespoke department to hand-select samples. Your imagination is the limit. When a watch and jewellery collection reach a certain size, large portions of it are often kept in safe-deposit boxes at banks. With a Buben & Zorweg safe, you can keep your valuable collection in your home beautifully presented and without compromising security.”
10. Zhoosh your jet
Picture this. Your first, second and third homes have been renovated, the yacht has had a recent facelift, even the horsebox is in fine fettle. It’s time to cosy up your cockpit (and the rest of your private jet). Clients of Banda, the property company founded by Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, husband of Princess Beatrice, tend to be frequent flyers, meaning they are loyal repeat patrons, and some of them are refusing to put up with a character-free cabin. In the interior of an American client’s Gulfstream, Nicola Sherbon, Banda’s head of design, is using the same luxury materials she deploys in Banda’s interiors, from woven leather to timber veneer and suede, to customise the cabin to allow for homely accessories, such as decorative lamps “that give the jet a residential feel”.
11. A grand piano (with concert pianist included)
Wow your guests by inviting them to a live recital by Lang Lang in your front room. You live in Melbourne and the classical pianist is giving a concert in Vienna, but you can see the keys on the piano move as if he is present. It’s Steinway’s spooky and surreal Spirio tech, which means you have a musical library that includes classical and jazz, historical and live performances, on your peerless grand piano. The musical library is updated monthly and has more than 340 hours of repertoire. Brilliant for those who lust after the Rolls-Royce of pianos, while still playing with L plates.
12. Barkitecture
A pet shower in the boot room, stocked with WildWash organic shampoo (grapefruit, bergamot and ginger fragrance, naturally), is an established feature of the contemporary dog-loving household. Architects are now taking canine comfort to the next level with miniature rooms within rooms, designed for pets. Charles Tashima has created a doghouse for a chocolate labrador, hidden in the stairwell of a North London renovation. “We came up with the idea of cutting an arched opening into the bottom of the stair to give the dog his own home within the home,” Tashima says. Who wouldn’t want to end up in this doghouse
This story is from the June issue of WISH.
