With winter just around the corner, there’s no time like the present to start preparing your home for the new season and getting it nice and cosy for the shorter, darker days and colder nights. As a luxury property owner, infusing comfort without compromising on style or that sense of opulence you’ve worked so hard to create can be a fine balance, but with the right approach, it’s entirely possible to achieve the best of both worlds.
Here, we take a look at some simple ways to combine functionality with aesthetics to turn your home into a cosy winter retreat.
Secondary window glazing
Keeping the drafts out is key during the winter months, and secondary window glazing is a great way to ensure you have an air-tight envelope. Also often known as ‘storm windows’, secondary window glazing provides an additional layer of glass or plastic installed either in the interior or to the exterior of your windows, creating a buffer between the two and offering additional insulation from the cold as well as helping to more effectively keep the heat in.
It also comes with the added bonus of reducing your heating costs, which can be frustratingly high even when money is no object, as well as serving as an effective sound barrier to keep noise out. And best of all, it can all be done without impacting upon the current aesthetic of your windows.
Smart home automation
In today’s fast-paced world, most of us live busy lifestyles and so anything that can make them easier and more efficient instantly exudes a sense of luxury. Smart home systems do just that, and allow you convenient control over your heating, lighting, security and entertainment systems via voice command or an app on your smartphone, wherever you happen to be in your home. Even better, smart home systems utilise machine learning to become familiar with your habits and adjust certain settings to suit your lifestyle and make your time at home more comfortable.
For example, it will learn what time you get up and go to bed, and the times you leave the house and return each day, and adjust the timings of your heating system to make sure that your abode is always warm and cosy when you need it to be. As well as feeling thoroughly luxurious, it’s also a more energy efficient way to live, and offers a new level of user-friendliness and the ability to tweak and tailor the schedules your system designs until it is fine-tuned to suit you to a tee.
Heated flooring
Luxury living is all about comfort, and being able to step barefoot onto a heated floor each morning as you get out of bed feels truly indulgent. Radiant floor heating systems can be installed underneath a range of different flooring materials so that you’ll never have to set foot on a cold floor again, as well as warming up the rest of the room and providing uniform warmth.
A space-saving choice that negates the need for large radiators or free-standing heaters, heated flooring is a great choice if you’re seeking a subtle solution that you won’t even know is there from a visual perspective. Another great benefit is that heated flooring can actually reduce the circulation of allergens and dust in your home, improving air quality and making your home a healthier place to live.
Insulated curtains
Insulated curtains and drapes are a stylish way to enhance insulation in your home whilst adding a touch of sophistication to the aesthetic. Their multiple layers, as opposed to just one keep things nice and cosy and help to retain the warmth in your living spaces whilst blocking drafts, too.
The fact that they are practical doesn’t mean you’ll have to compromise on style, either, because they come in a host of different designs, colours and prints. To ensure ours are the perfect fit, request to have them tailor-made to ensure they are just the right measurements for each of your windows.
A sense of cosiness that extends to the outdoors
Often, our gardens can be abandoned during the winter months when it’s too cold to spend time outside, but by creating a sense of warmth in your outdoor space you can make it more usable and enjoy all of the health and wellness benefits that come with getting some fresh air and sunlight, and spending time in nature.
Having a fire pit or outdoor fireplace installed in the centre of your outdoor heating area will mean you can invite friends and family to wrap up warm and enjoy a glass of mulled wine out on the deck in the lead-up to Christmas, while heated seating will add an extra touch of comfort.
