How to Elevate Your Entertaining Spaces: Tips from a Luxury Interior Designer

Designing a home for luxury entertaining is about far more than beautiful aesthetics. It's about curating environments that bring together elegant, purposeful, and functional details, creating spaces that simultaneously welcome guests and allow homeowners to focus on what matters most—connection.

Whether hosting an intimate dinner party or a full-blown celebration, a few thoughtful home design choices can refine your space, create a rich guest experience, and elevate your gatherings into moments remembered for many years to come.

If you want to elevate your home's entertaining amenities, here are five luxury design tips I recommend to ensure every event is unforgettable.

Five Luxury Design Tips For Home Entertaining

Embrace Togetherness With Open Floor Plans

When designing a space for elevated entertaining, it's always best to start with the foundation—in other words, take some time to consider your home's layout. Flowing, open floor plans are an excellent choice for homeowners who love to host and entertain, offering a range of benefits for gatherings, both big and small.

With fewer walls and barriers in place, open floor plans encourage guests to move easily between conversation spaces. They also create a sense of invitation between different zones of the house and allow homeowners to feel that they're a part of the action, even when they're off preparing meals or refreshments.

For smaller gatherings, these open floor plans don't have to compromise on intimacy, either. Area rugs, statement lighting, and architectural details (like a drop soffit ceiling) help to ensure that different living areas remain private and visually distinct without physically blocking them off from the rest of the room—a win-win for hosting groups of all sizes.

Invest in Ambiance with Layered Lighting & Organic Details

The second thing you'll want to consider is ambiance.

The secret to a great gathering is in the atmosphere we create, and there are plenty of ways we can use design to eliminate hosting stress and make guests feel welcome and at ease.

Start by exploring how you light your space. Layered lighting is a technique that uses a combination of ambient, task, and accent lighting to create balance, purpose, and visual appeal. When it comes to entertaining, dimmer switches on ambient lighting, like chandeliers or recessed lights, can help shape the guest experience by softening the atmosphere during intimate gatherings and brightening the energy up during a larger party.

You can also elevate your entertaining spaces through accent lighting, sparking conversation by spotlighting a favorite piece of artwork or introducing toe kick lighting under cabinets to cultivate subtle, warm ambience. Task lighting, like under cabinet lights or a pendant light over a card table, also play an important role in home entertaining, adding functionality by enhancing luminance in areas where hosts are preparing food or guests are partaking in an activity.

Beyond lighting, I also suggest that homeowners consider the role of organic details in helping guests to feel at home.

Materials, like wood, stone, linen, crystals, wool and natural metals like bronze, create a welcoming, tactile ambiance that makes even the most modern spaces feel warm and lived-in. Plus, these details promote a deepened connection to nature, which has been shown to increase relaxation and promote an overall sense of calm, especially when paired with other biophilic details like fresh flowers and indoor plants.

Opt For Multi-Functional Furniture and Flexible Seating

Next, turn your attention to furnishings. Flexibility is one of the most important considerations for homeowners who love to entertain.

I love adding swivel chairs to entertaining spaces, as this type of seating creates the option of changing focus depending on the moment's needs. You can also achieve this by adding modular or sectional sofas that can be arranged and adapted depending on the number of guests you want to accommodate.

Beyond seating, introducing additional storage is another great way to add flexibility to your living areas. An artfully placed box on a cocktail table can store things like coasters and remotes for electronics while built-ins are a great place to keep throw blankets, board games, and other entertaining essentials within reach, without having them visually available and adding clutter to your space.

And if you're looking for a simple way to add flexibility to your entertainment spaces without completely changing your furnishings, consider introducing a bar cart! A beautifully styled bar cart is an excellent way to streamline entertaining, creating ambiance and allowing you to move refreshments from room to room, depending on where guests gather.

Emphasize Outdoor Entertaining with Transitional Design

Home entertaining isn't limited to our interiors, though—and as an interior designer based in Arizona (a region that receives more than 300 sunny days each year!) I'm no stranger to the benefits of outdoor entertaining.

Investing in beautiful patio spaces and transitional design choices that create flow between our indoor and outdoor living areas, can exponentially expand our home entertainment spaces. One of my favorite ways to achieve this is through pocket door systems, where doors disappear completely into neighboring walls—opening up space in our home’s interior to let the outdoors in.

Think about also introducing coordinating details from your home's interior into exterior living areas, such as colors, finishes, and/or materials, to tie them together and encourage guests to move freely between them.

From there, additions like cozy outdoor fireplaces surrounded by comfortable seating, outdoor dining areas, and outdoor kitchen spaces have the ability to elevate outdoor entertainment spaces further, making them functional through every season.

Consider Other Thoughtful Details That Elevate The Guest Experience

While the tips above offer some fundamental considerations when elevating your home entertaining spaces, there are countless other ways to continue to enhance the guest experience!

This is the time to get creative and think about the type of host you want to be and the gatherings you want to cultivate within your space!

For many homeowners, this means touching on elements like whole home automation such as Lutron’s HomeWorks system which puts lighting, climate control, security and home audio visual equipment through one centralized location. The ease of access is a must for hosts, allowing you to adjust music, temperature, and ambient lighting without ever having to step away from the festivities.

You can also tie in wellness with home entertaining through thoughtful additions like outdoor spa pools and cold plunges, which provide stress-relief and relaxation for homeowners as well as a unique social hub and experience for guests during a hosting event.

Consider also the sensory addition of candles, diffusers, and other aromatic details. Scent plays a powerful role in cultivating emotion and mood within a space. I personally gravitate towards lighter additions, achieved through a candle or essential oil diffuser, with fresh, lightly floral notes, like jasmine or ylang ylang.

Designing a great home entertainment space is about bringing people together through functional, beautiful design choices. It's about creating connection and cultivating the experiences closest to our hearts—and by applying these tips, I hope you'll feel empowered to bring these occasions to life in your home. Happy hosting!