What Luxury Means Now
The word luxury has traditionally conjured images of designer handbags, name-brand cars, coveted shoes, high-end electronics and other visible markers of worldly possession. But something has been shifting. The allure of the logo and the status attached to a brand name seems to be waning, and in its place, luxury is emerging as something altogether different, a new category that is far more personal, understated and divergent from what we have traditionally understood it to be.
People are no longer identifying with a brand that many others also wear or carry. There is an inward movement towards connecting with things that feel specifically “you.” And along with that an outward movement to source the artisans and designers that are handcrafting an entirely new form of luxury. This kind of luxury is so deeply personal that it almost feels wrong to want it simply because you’ve seen it in someone else’s home. Maybe it’s a beautifully unexpected wall treatment, a custom sofa made just for the space, or a souvenir brought home from somewhere far away. These are the details that feel intrinsically yours, right down to the sensory experience of colour, texture and material. It’s not about having what someone else has; it’s about creating something that could only belong to you.
Luxury is increasingly found in one-of-a-kind craftsmanship—a unique property, a thoughtful restoration, or a home entrusted to someone as its next steward. There is something deeply luxurious about having something that no one else has, not simply because it is rare, but because it carries a story and a responsibility that is uniquely yours.
Corn Cob shown above, established in 1876, embodies this kind of luxury. Its value isn't found in status or excess, but in the experience of having something truly individual, something with its own history, character and sense of place, and the privilege of carrying that story forward.
For us as designers, it’s an invitation to design with the individual, not simply for them. To create something that is deeply connected to a family’s lineage and shaped by the history, experiences and stories that make them who they are.
For this Balsam Lake project, the old historical family lodge called Nahma Lodge, sits adjacent to the new build. Its story dictated the new build for the future generations that now gather at Nahma on South Bay. Sometimes luxury is the story. It’s a unique and personal background that only this family has. As a result, their project reflected the spirit of previous generations.
The Design Itself
I see this as the actual design language, the materials we choose, the colours, textures, craftsmanship and custom elements that begin to give a home its identity. These choices may follow a particular aesthetic or theme, or they may not. What matters is how they come together as a sequence, with each decision relating to the next and contributing to the larger vision.
Custom elements in Project Nahma included details like this round window that provides a view from the primary bedroom to the great room below. With a nod to the nautical, lakeside location, the window is a tension producing visual unique to only this build.
For me as a designer, this is where the real work of luxury begins. It’s about understanding how to sew luxury throughout the design plan rather than simply adding luxurious things to it afterward. Another example is the skywalk shown above. This feature bridges one family space to another and the glass railing anchors it. Even though it runs across the entire space, the glass railing renders it invisible and non-intrusive. It has a seamless flow within the overall design.
At the beginning, it is just a drawing. Lines on a page. A floor plan. An idea of how the spaces might connect. But within that plan is an opportunity to make the home deeply personal, to consider not only how it looks, but how someone will actually live in it. This client had a lot of collections, so finding ways to display and store meaningful work was important and luxury meant how do we do that without just building closets everywhere.
The walkways within the design needed to be wide open to add to the overall grandeur. The butler pantry allows multiple family members to have ample space for meal prep and for displaying special collectables that add to the kitchen feel. This family required something entirely different from other plans, three generations live within the same structure and creating three homes in one, meant we needed to understand how each generation would use the cottage for years to come.
This is also one of the most challenging parts of designing luxury. Choosing beautiful materials, exceptional fixtures or a custom piece after the fact is relatively straightforward. Creating a plan that is inherently luxurious because it has been conceived around a particular person or family requires something else entirely. It requires listening, observing and understanding how someone wants to move through their day.
Maybe luxury is a breezeway because that’s where you imagine sitting with the morning paper and your coffee. Maybe it’s a sunroom designed to become your office because you love working with an afternoon breeze coming through the windows. Perhaps it’s a library or wine cellar created to house a collection you’ve spent years building, or one designed to give you a place to begin one.
Our Clear Lake project presented the opportunity for a custom wine cellar and unique entry door. The stone wall treatment also meant we were able to make it a feature as part of the overall plan. These clients love to travel and entertain, so having their collection in a special area means they can add to it over time, and also bring an interesting space to life that would have otherwise been a hidden storage area under the stairs.
These spaces may not immediately announce themselves as luxury. They may not be grand or expensive. But they are luxurious because they exist for a very specific reason, and that reason belongs entirely to you.
This is where we begin to redefine luxury, not as the things we put into a home, but as the thoughtfulness built into the home itself. Luxury is in the customization of the plan, in the way the design anticipates your rituals, your pleasures, your collections and the way you want to live.
Even a guest house separate from the main cottage in the case of our Sturgeon Lake project, signals the custom need this family had for guest privacy. Finished in plywood, the interior is not overly luxurious in thought but the customization is where the true definition of luxury emerges. It’s a designed space just for this place within the woods and meets the very specific needs of this family.
To see more of this project, you can read our blog story on The Moment Your Design Story Gets Told. And if you are a Dwell Magazine subscriber click the link in the blog story to see how the Dwell Editors were excited to feature our Kawartha Lakes project!
The most meaningful luxury is designed into the bones of the home. By the time we begin selecting the beautiful things, the luxury is already there.
In the above great room, custom hidden storage made use of space that exterior stone pillars provided. Hidden storage is a defining element of modern upscale design. In high-end interiors, luxury is often defined by what you don't see. It’s about maintaining pristine, uncluttered spaces through seamless integration.
The Things Within It
This is where we get to inject luxury into the outcome: the objects, furnishings and details that begin to make the space feel unmistakably personal. Art, furniture, collected objects, books, textiles and the things we bring home from our travels all have a role to play.
Our client’s art was an important part of shaping her new home and integrating it into a downsized lifestyle. We never see downsizing as a negative; in fact, a smaller space can create an entirely different kind of luxury. With less space comes the opportunity to be more selective, more considered and less cluttered, making room for the things that matter and, ultimately, more room for living.
As a designer, the challenge is in bringing all of these things together so they work in tandem. One beautiful piece on its own can be wonderful, but luxury comes from the relationship between everything in the room. It’s knowing what belongs, what doesn’t, what needs to be quiet and what deserves to be noticed.
An heirloom dresser works in tandem with modern kitchen cabinetry. An impactful light fixture against a custom coffered ceiling treatment, creates an emotional feeling when people enter the room. It’s two examples of luxury because as a designer, I knew what needed to be noticed.
This is where the new luxury really starts to reveal itself. The contents of a home should feel uniquely yours, rather than selected from a catalogue of what luxury is supposed to look like.
Personal art and inherited antiques are personal possessions that the new definition of luxury recognizes as being priceless and unique to only you and your design story.
Custom birch pendants from Propellor Studio in Vancouver use natural materials that can be found right outside this client’s door. Hand formed sheets of birch are stretched over metal hoops and stitched together with waxed linen thread. Having a pendant light custom-made from birch bark is luxury at another level, not because it is extravagant, but because it demands time, material, craftsmanship and a human hand to create something that could never be mass-produced. This is the new luxury: deeply considered, beautifully made and entirely unique to the space.
A custom wall treatment. Hidden, streamlined storage. A table designed specifically for the way a family gathers. Furniture altered to suit the room, or made specifically for it. Exceptional lighting that changes the atmosphere as the day moves through the space. These are the details that can speak to luxury, not simply because they are expensive, but because they have been considered.
Custom cabinetry in our Clear Lake build brings a unique storage solution to a walkout lower level. Luxury is not about having more, instead it’s about everything having a place. As a result, the things you love become more noticeable and take centre stage.
And then there are the things that can't be ordered at all.
A sweet collection of heirloom dishes lines the cupboard shelves of this Sturgeon Point cottage. When thoughtfully gathered and displayed in the right context, collections become a form of personalized luxury, filled with pieces that could belong to no other family, and no other cottage.
Travel finds are some of my favourites because there is nothing more custom than bringing a piece of somewhere else home with you. A bowl found in a small shop, a textile discovered while travelling, an object picked up simply because it spoke to you in that moment. These things carry a history that belongs to you. They tell us where you have been, what caught your eye and what you chose to bring forward.
A tapestry throw pillow discovered while travelling, is a perfect match to the luxurious bedding in this client’s guest room.
In that sense, they become part of the lineage of the home, adding where you have been to where you are now.
This built-in at Sandy Point houses our client’s travel memories, giving each piece a considered place within the design. We used lighting to highlight certain works, turning a collection of personal objects into an installation that feels entirely her own. You won’t find this display anywhere else. That is the essence of new luxury: personalization through a designer’s eye, creating something one-of-a-kind from the things that already hold meaning.
This is perhaps the greatest luxury of all: creating a home filled with things that could not have been selected for anyone else. Not because they are rare or expensive, but because their meaning is personal.
Tim and I at home on Sturgeon Lake, surrounded by a few of the souvenirs we’ve collected over the years. Travel has always been a source of inspiration for us, not only in the things we bring home, but in the materials, architecture, details and influences we discover along the way. Those experiences find their way into our work, shaping the design-builds and renovations we create for our clients.
The Story Behind It
This is where luxury is ultimately conveyed, not simply in what we see, but in the story behind how it came to be.
Think about that special nook or breezeway we designed around the way someone wanted to live. The story isn't just that it exists. It's why it was placed there, how the morning light moves through it, how the view was framed, why the proportions feel the way they do, or how a particular material was chosen because of the way it feels under your hand. The story is in the thinking behind the design and in the craftsmanship that brings that thinking to life.
This project incorporated many custom elements from the coffered ceiling treatment to built-in cabinetry. All of which conveyed the sense of luxury and personalized design that we worked with the client to integrate.
And then there is the wait.
There is something inherently luxurious about having the time to imagine an outcome before it exists. To sit with a drawing. To contemplate a material. To change your mind. To wait for the right piece to be found or the right craftsman to make it. To watch an idea move slowly from a line on a page into something real.
Perhaps this is one of the greatest shifts in our understanding of luxury. We have become accustomed to immediacy, to seeing something, wanting it and having it. But the new luxury allows for something different: time.
Time to think. Time to choose. Time to make. Time to wait.
For a designer, that process is part of the privilege of the work. We get to imagine the finished space long before anyone else can see it. We know why the window is there, why the room turns in a particular direction, why the table is the size it is and what we hope will happen when someone finally sits down in it. There is an anticipation in watching a design come to fruition that is difficult to replicate when everything is simply selected and installed.
And perhaps that's why it isn't entirely wrong to begin with the story.
Sometimes the story comes first. You know how you want to live, what you want to collect, what you want to see when you wake up, where you want to read, gather, work or simply sit. From there, the designer helps translate that story into a plan, and eventually, into a place.
For this project the story definitely came first! Everything we uncovered in the demolition was mint green. So much so, that we agreed with the cottage owner that we could build a mint green countertop into the renovation for a charming and personalized nod to the journey. This idea of the story influencing some of the project outcome is proof that it’s ok with draw from the story along the way!
Another client story began with something as simple as a love of the colour on their stove. From there, we colour-matched it to Farrow & Ball Lulworth Blue and carried that colour into the renovation.
What might otherwise have been an uneventful design decision became part of the story of the home. It’s these small, personal moments that can take on greater meaning over time, a detail to remember, a story to share and an emotional connection to the place you live. This is another expression of new luxury: surrounding yourself with what you personally love.
Luxury has always had a relationship with history. It is found in things made well, things made slowly, things made to last. The new luxury carries that idea forward, but makes it deeply personal. It is less concerned with displaying what we have and more interested in expressing who we are.
It is quiet. It is private. It is tactile. And increasingly, it is about freedom, the freedom to take your time, to make considered choices and to create something that doesn't need to prove its value to anyone else.
The new definition of luxury shifts away from loud excess, recognizable status symbols and scale, toward quiet substance, emotional resonance and time-honoured craftsmanship. It values personal sanctuaries, bespoke details and materials with a story over anything mass-produced simply to signify status.
In the end, perhaps the greatest luxury is not what someone else sees when they walk through your door. It's what you know about the place that they don't.
The story behind it.
Why it's there.
How it came to be.
And why, in all the world, it could only be yours.
Birthday cakes are a bit like the new luxury! Uniquely yours, personalized for you like in the case of our carpenter’s specially designed creation!
Read our blog story on how travel inspires and influences our design practice.
You may also enjoy our Living Connected Through Design blog where we talk about the psychology of how the things in our home make us feel and why they are important to us.
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See our latest Project Portfolio full of architectural and interior design imagery.
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Tim + Chris
