Cheers to the Modern Bar in Luxury Home Interior Design

The big question — especially as the entertaining extravaganza that is the holiday season is upon us:  Do you design your home (and your bar area!) for the way you live daily, or the way it should function when guests arrive?

Funny story: As I was writing this blog, I absent-mindedly dictated this first sentence as a question to Siri. Her answer? “I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to that question!” 

Forget Siri. The answer to this looming question is this: BOTH.

To all the beloved hosts out there, luxury interior design should phenomenally support the best daily living AND how any space must flex to assist with fabulous parties — large and small.

Today, I want to specifically focus on modern bar design in the context of entertaining — and how bars both big and small can work in interior home design to integrate into everyday life and for special occasions.

Big & Bold Bar Design

When space allows and passion directs, a big statement bar in interior home design can be a dramatic way to command a room — and accommodate a crowd — for homeowners who love to gather guests for football nights and cocktail parties (or just flex their mixology skills).

For one expansive sublevel bar, we designed a very rich and clubby destination that oozes with swanky attitude. Seating for seven pulls up to the high gloss, striated bar façade that’s intentionally confident and grounding. The bar stools themselves are pure eye candy in metallic faux ostrich.

To keep the bar design from feeling too dark, backlit glass shelving is exciting and illuminating as it borders two inset TV screens that are perfect for watching the game.

We also envisioned this bar with intimacy and expansion in mind — it feeds into a media room with additional seating pods that welcome smaller conversation units as well as bigger guest counts. Remember: It’s perfectly fine for a large bar and extended space to have an unused zone when it’s not in “’large-crowd-use.”

Small & Bold Bar Design

Make no mistake: A small bar can still flaunt plenty of bold moves. We just wrapped up one that is petite yet perfectly suited to the great room interior design in which it lives.

In this space, the bar had to be important, but it couldn’t be a scene stealer. It needed to be interesting and handsome, rich and detailed, yet it couldn’t overpower anything it was sitting next to — cue Audrey Hepburn and the drama-queen fireplace, not to mention the views outside.

The bar doesn’t have to be the main star of every room.

In its original form, before we got our hands on it, this bar was quite dark and cave-like. So, we had the builder lower the ceiling to get the lighting source closer to the bar proper.  The curvaceous bar front signals a softness in the space.

The introduction of acrylic in the bar stools and the shelving behind the bar is unexpected and gorgeous yet intentionally quiet and light, so as not to take up too much visual real estate.

The beauty of this bar is also in its finer details with a textured, hammered metal sink and cabinetry that picks up a soft greige tone. The only black on the bar is in the standoffs in the shelving and the miniature sculpture, which keeps the overall effect balanced with the great room interior design.

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This tale of two bars concludes with two happily-ever-afters for the respective homeowners who are both equipped with dream entertaining scenarios that fit their everyday lifestyle, too.

At our interior design firm, we prioritize luxurious and livable areas that perfectly fit into your home’s square footage and architecture while speaking to your personal aesthetic and lifestyle.Our expertise means we know exactly what questions to ask, so that we can create luxury interior design (including entertaining spaces!) that are impeccable — stunning, welcoming, and functional, and that feel generous and relaxing and personalized just for you.