HOME STYLE: HOTEL

One of the things I love about our place is that our bedroom/en suite area feels like a hotel, albeit slightly more personalised than your average Starwood suite. The bedroom is one of the most important rooms in the house - it is the place where you should be able to wind down at the end of a long day and sleep peacefully as if you were indeed on holidays. Here's how I like to keep our room to hotel standard:

1. Indulge in the best quality linen you can afford. I won't scrimp when it comes to bedding - high thread count, Egyptian cotton is what you should be looking for. It's softer on the skin than regular cotton, lasts longer and feels so much better to sleep in. The same goes for our en-suite - I love having plush towels, matching bath mats and hand towels. I recently bought some fantastic hotel-style white organic towels from Eco Down Under. They're just like the ones you find in hotels and are such a treat to dry off with!

 2. Clean your bedroom every day. The first thing you should do when you wake up is make your bed. Think about how good it feels when you leave your hotel room for a day out and come back to a freshly made bed and immaculate room. This is what you should come home to every day - mess is stress and stress doesn't belong in the bedroom. Try to change your sheets once a week and, if possible, iron pillowcases and quilt covers - it looks much better than crumpled linen! If I can't be bothered ironing, I make sure to hang my linen to dry as neatly as possible, shaking out any creases before I peg them on the line.

3. Invest in lamps or lighting with dimmer switches. The thing I love about our room is that we not only have two lights at each side of the bed for minimal lighting, the main lights in the room have a dimmer switch. Lighting is an important feature in creating "mood" in a room - by dimming the switch, you can change the mood of the room for ultimate relaxation or romance!

4. Stock something special: Hotels have mini bars stocked with drinks and candies, bathrooms with miniature soaps and shampoos. I keep the best products in the en-suite: fragrant soaps, shampoos, cleansers and moisturisers. Nothing feels better than slipping into good sheets while your skin is clean and fresh!

5. Accessorise! In good hotels, you'll notice they usually have well-selected furniture and soft furnishings. We've got a simple but elegant king-bed, dark wood drawers and a matching shelves in our walk-in wardrobe. It can look quite masculine, which isn't a bad thing but I like to add a few touches of personality to make our room more "us" (without over-cluttering or making it too girly). Select a few tasteful pieces that stand out and hold significance for you. We've got a special bedside table that James brought from an old apartment he lived in - for memory's sake. My perfumes, books, photos, ceramic pieces and a mason jar filled with fresh flowers make the place look a little more like home.

 

6. Choose your media wisely: I know many people think having a TV

in the bedroom is a distraction but one of the things I like about staying in a hotel is being able to watch in-house movies from the comfort of my bed. Because we both easily drift off to the television, it's wise for us not to watch them in the living room as it just means having to disrupt our sleep and drag ourselves to bed later. I find it's better to watch something in bed, then when we feel tiredness creeping in, we can simply switch off the TV, shut our eyes and get our eight hours. The same goes for books - they are great at helping me to fall asleep and I keep a stockpile in our room! I wouldn't recommend other "non-leisure" forms of media pervading the bedroom, for instance: studying in your room or answering e-mails on your blackberry throughout the night. The bedroom is a place of rest and leisure and is one place work doesn't belong - shuteye is important for enabling us to do our day jobs!

And there you have it. A handful of ways I like to keep our sleeping quarters feeling as luxurious and relaxing as a hotel stay... Do you have any tips when it comes to styling your bedroom or the rest of the home?