When global politics and technology accelerate, the rest of the world tends to follow, ready or not. It’s why what passed for a luxury home five years ago might just be considered expensive by today’s tastes. So what features define the luxury market in modern real estate? And which are already passé?
Features That Define the Modern Luxury Home
Technology You Feel (But Don’t See)
There was a time when nothing confirmed luxury quite like a wall of touchscreens, security gadgetry, and dozens of apps fighting one another to bring an owner the most comfort and convenience. But today’s luxury home doesn’t put smart technology in the spotlight… even if it’s still very much there. This purposeful blending of technology and environment takes smart features like temperature control, security, and entertainment, and works them into architecture and furnishings.
Top-of-the-line smart features also use AI to anticipate an owner’s needs proactively. Think kitchen appliances tucked away behind chic cabinetry or wellness features coordinated to biometric feedback. Perhaps most importantly, luxury buyers don’t want to sift through an army of apps. They expect all of their technological conveniences to operate on a single, seamlessly coordinated platform.
Baking Wellness Into the Design
We recently discussed wellness infiltrating the Palm Springs luxury market, so it should come as no surprise that health and well-being are integral to modern luxury home designs. These structures are outfitted with property-spanning air purification systems, lighting dialed into the owner’s circadian rhythm, and biophilic designs that bring a modern touch to California architecture’s love affair with blending indoor and outdoor living. And the gyms, saunas, and yoga studios in yesterday’s luxury homes? Those are baseline expectations.
Warmer and More Welcoming
The days of white and chilly gray expanses of walls are over (for now, anyway). These days, it’s much more chic for a luxury home to embrace beiges, earthy neutrals, warm taupes, olive greens, and muted coastal blues. There’s purpose behind the palette. All of these colors tend to enhance natural lighting, leaning into that ever-popular California theme of indoor-outdoor living. Texture also plays a role in clarifying the modern luxury home. In LA, limewash paint jobs, plaster finishes, rich wood paneling, and bold dimensional wall treatments are particularly en vogue.
Midimalism
The enduring trend of minimalism took a hit this year, and it’s no different in the luxury market, where the style has been supplanted with a design philosophy perplexingly called midimalism. It’s so fresh that autocorrect doesn’t recognize it. But midimalism basically finds the middle ground between minimalism and maximalism, allowing owners to take what they like from both aesthetics and let their own personality shine through. What a concept! Midimalism opens the door for a plethora of styles, periods, and influences arranged around key focal pieces. It can be hard to pin down. But midimalism is the answer to a luxury market that doesn’t want to commit to anything that feels too sterile or gaudily contrived.
Privacy Remains Crucial
It seems like the higher the listing price, the greater the priority of privacy. But technology has accelerated the evolution of privacy features (along with the expectations of luxury home buyers). Modern privacy comes in layers and often includes automated entry, biometric access, AI security cameras, soundproofing, and strategic landscaping that blocks sight lines from passersby.
Green Behind the Scenes
Can we even refer to eco-consciousness as a trend at this point? In the luxury home market, sustainability is now a clear expectation. This can even extend to the very bones of a new luxury construction by using environmentally safe carbon-neutral building materials, reclaimed wood and stone, and smart energy monitoring that helps to manage consumption.
Luxury Trends in Memoriam
Some of the features that defined a luxury home throughout the 2010s haven’t aged well. Take, for example, the sterility of an all-white kitchen. This aesthetic was once all the rage, but to modern sensibilities, it feels too cold and generic. Open floor plans can still work, but only with proper acoustic consideration. This is especially true with the rise of remote work. Even the upper class needs to take a Zoom meeting from time to time.
In addition, designs tend to do better in the luxury market when driven by purpose. Using converted bedrooms for offices and studios may have flown a few years ago. But today, these features need to be intentionally designed with sound insulation, lighting fit for broadcasting, or even enough space for intimate in-person meetings. The gloss, chrome, and lacquer that made sheen so chic are being replaced with tactile textures that invite us to peer beyond the surface, like patinated distressing, unlacquered brass, and customized bronze. The emphasis has moved away from “shiny and new” into aging with grace.
Fashionable Functionality
In a sense, you can look at the luxury home of five years ago as a decadent portrait offering variable depth beyond the first impression. The luxury home of today is much more concerned with the living aspect, by comparison. In essence, function is in fashion.
With a brand that says as much as JohnHart’s, Senior Copywriter Seth Styles never finds himself at a loss for words. Responsible for maintaining the voice of the company, he spends each day drafting marketing materials, blogs, bios, and agent resources that speak from the company’s collective mind and Hart… errr, heart.
Having spent over a decade in creative roles across a variety of industries, Seth brings with him vast experience in SEO practices, digital marketing, and all manner of professional writing with particular strength in blogging, content creation, and brand building. Gratitude, passion, and sincerity remain core tenets of his unwavering work ethic. The landscape of the industry changes daily, paralleling JohnHart’s efforts to {re}define real estate, but Seth works to maintain the company’s consistent message while offering both agents and clients a new echelon of service.
When not preserving the JohnHart essence in stirring copy, Seth puts his efforts into writing and illustrating an ongoing series entitled The Death of Romance. In addition, he adores spending quality time with his girlfriend and Romeo (his long-haired chihuahua mix), watching ‘70s and ‘80s horror movies, and reading (with a particular penchant for Victorian horror novels and authors Yukio Mishima and Bret Easton Ellis). He also occasionally records music as the vocalist and songwriter for his glam rock band, Peppermint Pumpkin.
