Interview: What Europe's Top 3 Hotel Interior Designers Predict for Private Homes in 2027–2028

Posted by Luxury Group International Design Team / Luxury Hotel Interior / July 19, 2026

Where luxury hospitality meets residential living — and why your living room is about to look a lot more like a five-star suite.

There’s a quiet shift happening in the way wealthy Europeans think about home. It’s not about bigger square footage or louder statement pieces. It’s about something harder to pin down: the feeling of a space.

And nobody understands that feeling better than the designers who’ve spent the last two decades crafting Europe’s most coveted hotel interiors — the ones where guests pay €2,000 a night not for the thread count, but for the way the room breathes.

I sat down with three of them. Not their PR teams. The designers themselves. What they told me about the next 18 months will reshape how you think about luxury home design trends 2027 Europe — and why the boundary between hotel and home is dissolving faster than anyone expected.

The Panel

Margaux Véron — Paris-based, recently completed the full redesign of a historic palace hotel in the Marais. Known for her obsessive attention to material tactility.

Stefan Holzmann — Munich. Specializes in Alpine wellness properties. His latest project: a 40-suite retreat in the Dolomites where every room is a "recovery chamber."

Elena Marchetti — Milan. The name behind three of Italy’s most talked-about boutique openings in the last four years. Her philosophy: "A room should feel like it was waiting for you."

The Interview

On the Biggest Shift Coming to Private Homes

Margaux Véron: "For years, residential clients would hand me a Pinterest board of hotel lobbies and say, 'I want this, but at home.' Now they’re not showing me lobbies at all. They’re showing me suites. The intimate spaces. The dressing areas. The bathrooms where you actually want to spend time. That’s the future luxury interior design trend nobody’s talking about yet — the domestication of the suite experience."

"The lobby is dead. The suite is the new living room."

She’s not wrong. Walk into any newly renovated €5 million apartment in Knightsbridge or the 7th arrondissement right now and you’ll notice it: the living area has shrunk. The primary bedroom has doubled. The bathroom has become a sanctuary. It’s the "space economy" logic that’s already reshaping luxury travel — travelers now prioritize residential-style intimacy over grand public spaces

— and it’s migrating straight into private homes.

Stefan Holzmann: "My hotel clients are asking for something I never expected: rooms that feel like someone’s actual home. Not a fantasy of home. A real one. Soft lighting that adjusts to circadian rhythms. Air quality you can feel. Materials that age with dignity, not perfection. And now my residential clients — the ones building second homes in Gstaad, in Cortina — they want exactly the same thing. The vocabulary has merged."

This convergence isn’t accidental. Wellness has moved from spa menu to architecture of the stay itself

, and the wealthiest homeowners are importing that logic room by room. Circadian lighting. Recovery-focused layouts. Nutrition concierge stations built into kitchen design. What started as hotel industry innovation is becoming baseline expectation for European interior designer predictions in the residential sphere.

Elena Marchetti: "The word I keep hearing is intentionality. Not 'luxury' — intentionality. My clients don’t want more. They want better. A single perfect chair instead of six adequate ones. A wall finished in hand-troweled plaster instead of wallpaper. They’ve stayed in enough hotels to know the difference between something designed to impress and something designed to last."

On Materials and Texture

Margaux: "Everyone talks about sustainability. I’m tired of the word. What I’m seeing is a return to slowness in materials. Limestone that takes six months to quarry properly. Wood left unfinished so it patinas. Linen that wrinkles with character. In hotels, we’ve been doing this for years because guests touch everything — they notice when a surface feels dead. Homeowners are finally catching up. They want to live with materials that have a memory."

Stefan: "The Alpine projects taught me this: cold materials are out. Not just literally cold — psychologically cold. Polished marble, high-gloss lacquer, chrome. We’re replacing them with warmed stone, matte metals, raw timber. In my latest residential commission, we specified a kitchen island in unfilled travertine. The client panicked. 'It will stain,' she said. I told her: 'That’s the point. In five years, it will be yours in a way no Caesarstone ever could.' She agreed. That conversation would not have happened three years ago."

Elena: "Textiles are where I see the most dramatic shift. We’re moving past the 'accent pillow' era. I’m specifying full-room fabric treatments — walls upholstered in wool, ceilings in silk, floors in hand-knotted rugs so thick you sink into them. It’s the hotel suite logic: every surface should invite touch. Your home should feel like it wants you there."

On Technology — And Where It Belongs

Stefan: "Here’s what I tell every client: technology should be felt, not seen. In our hotel projects, we hide everything — speakers in the plaster, sensors in the baseboards, climate control that adjusts before you realize you’re uncomfortable. The residential world is still catching up. Too many smart homes look like mission control. The future is invisible infrastructure."

Elena: "AI is coming, obviously. But the mistake is thinking AI means more screens. It means fewer. My prediction for 2027–2028: the wealthiest homes will have almost no visible technology. Everything predictive, everything ambient. The room knows you. It warms before you arrive. It dims when your heart rate suggests stress. But there’s no interface. No app to open. Just... relief."

This aligns with what hospitality strategists are already tracking: AI in luxury settings works best when it becomes invisible, freeing staff to focus on moments requiring genuine human judgment

. The same principle applies at home. The technology serves the feeling, never the reverse.

Margaux: "The only visible tech I’m specifying now? Analog. A beautiful rotary dial for lighting. A brass lever for water temperature. The contrast is the point. When everything else is invisible, the one tactile interface becomes precious."

On Color, Light, and Mood

Elena: "Color forecasting is nonsense. Every year someone declares 'sage green is the new beige.' I ignore it. What I’m seeing instead is a move toward atmospheric color — tones that shift with the day. Dawn pink. Midday chalk. Evening umber. We achieve this through layered lighting and material translucency, not paint. The room changes. You don’t."

Margaux: "Natural light is the most underrated luxury. In my Paris hotel project, we spent three months studying sun paths to ensure every suite had morning light in the bedroom and afternoon light in the bath. Residential clients are now asking for the same analysis. They want to know: where does the 7 a.m. light fall in January? Where does the 6 p.m. shadow land in June? This is not hobbyist behavior. This is people who understand that light is the original material."

Stefan: "Darkness matters too. True darkness. Blackout is not enough — we’re designing 'night rooms' now. Spaces with zero light pollution, zero EMF, zero sound. Inspired by hotel sleep suites, but taken further. A client in St. Moritz just commissioned a dedicated sleep chamber. No windows. Temperature controlled to 18 degrees. Air filtered to alpine standards. It sounds extreme. In 2028, it won’t be."

On What They’d Never Do in a Home

Margaux: "Never replicate a hotel lobby. I’ve had clients ask for a 'reception area' in their house. I refuse. The lobby is transactional. Your home should never feel transactional."

Stefan: "Never install a 'wellness room' as an afterthought. If wellness is going to be part of your home, it has to be structural. The air system. The water filtration. The way light enters. You can’t bolt wellness onto a standard floor plan."

Elena: "Never design for resale. The best homes — like the best hotels — have a point of view. They polarize. Some people will walk in and feel immediately at ease. Others will feel immediately excluded. That’s the sign you’ve succeeded. Safe design is forgettable design."

The Pull Quote That Stopped the Room

"In 2028, the most expensive thing in a home won’t be the art or the marble. It will be the silence. The space between objects. The permission to do nothing." — Elena Marchetti

What This Means for You

If you’re planning a renovation, a new build, or even just a room refresh in the next 18 months, the message from Europe’s top hotel designers is surprisingly democratic:

Steal from suites, not lobbies. Prioritize intimacy over grandeur.
Invest in what you touch, not what you photograph. The future of luxury is tactile.
Let your home have an opinion. The era of neutral, market-safe design is ending. The homes that matter will feel like someone lives there.
Make technology disappear. The best smart home is the one you never think about.
Design for your body, not just your eye. Light, air, temperature, silence — these are the new status symbols.

Your Turn: Ask Me Anything

I’ll be in the comments for the next 48 hours. Want to know which specific materials Margaux is specifying for her next residential project? Curious about Stefan’s "night room" specs? Wondering if Elena’s atmospheric color theory works in a north-facing London flat?

Drop your question below. The designers have agreed to answer the best ones directly.

This interview was conducted in June 2026 across Paris, Munich, and Milan. All quotes are direct and unedited. Images from the designers' portfolios are available on request.

About the Author: Luxury Group International's Design Team covers the intersection of hospitality, architecture, and residential design across Europe.