You don’t need to go on a holiday to feel like you’re on a holiday. You can achieve this same blissed-out serene feeling in the one place you always have access to: home.
While you might not have a poolside cabana and panoramic ocean views in your backyard, you can recreate that out-of-office resort atmosphere with a few simple styling tips that will have your home feeling like a boutique hotel in no time.
Here’s our Bonnie and Neil guide to designing the perfect tranquil retreat at home without the jet lag or early check-out.
Make your bed nice
For us a good hotel is all about the bed. Fresh linen. Plump pillows. The optimal sheet-to-duvet warmth factor. While we don’t have the magic formula to guarantee your bed is always made a la hotel life, we do know the quickest upgrade to any bedroom is new bed linen. We’ll be setting the scene for a good night’s rest and Sunday sleep-in with our Flora buff bed cover, Boucle stripe red pink throw and mix of our Cosmos pink European pillowcases and throw Cosmos cerise bolsters and Tendril multi cushions.
To anchor the look, we’ll be adding one of our Bonnie and Neil plush Wool rugs under the bed with one of our Pedestal side tables on each side of the bed, it’s the perfect size to perch your empty plate of toast and morning coffee – because with a bedroom retreat this relaxing you will be eating breakfast in bed.
From bathroom to day spa
Bathrooms have the enduring power to fluctuate from places of fast-paced madness to luxuriating slowness. But we’re all about the latter and will have your bathroom feeling like that day spa you were meant to go to but took so long your gift voucher expired.
First up, warm up the tiles by placing either one of our long bath mats on the floor or scatter a trio of our new Leaf bath mats. While you’ve got the bath water running, drop in a few essential oils and Epsom salts to help tired bodies, then set yourself up with all your bath time essentials. For ours, we’ll have our Wave side table bath side with our scented Sicilian orange candle burning and our speckled dots glass carafe with sparkling water with cooling cucumber and refreshing mint.
Embrace outdoor dining
Something happens when you go into holiday mode and one of those things you ditch eating inside for eating outside. Whether you’re people watching while sipping aperitif curbside in Paris, or eating poolside at the resort that feels worthy of its own HBO miniseries, the everyday habit of eating feels elevated when outdoors.
Dust off the outdoor furniture, open the patio umbrella and host your next soiree outdoors this summer. We’ll be swapping suburbia for resort-style with our Rosetta blue tablecloth and Big stripe mint napery, and setting up a DIY cocktail station with our glass carafes filled with ready-to-go limoncello spritz, Pimm’s, and seltzers. We’ll also be bringing out our holiday-everyday Monstera printed plates and Hibiscus-patterned snack bowls filled with bowls of cherries, olives and platters of Venetian-style cicchetti.
Find a place to lounge
The final pitstop in truly transforming your home into a relaxing retreat is finding a place to lounge. If you stop to think about it, you rarely sit upright on a holiday – your default mode is to recline.
We’ll be investing in an outdoor lounge set this summer and adding extra comfort to it with our outdoor cushions, bolsters and soft seat pads in bold, colourful prints. Our outdoor cushions are made from weather-repellent linen and filled with mould-resistant, outdoor quality foam – so they will be with you for many summer siestas and staycations to come.
Photography by Martina Gemmola and Styling by Natalie Turnbull.