Before & After
Design Concierge - Airbnb Project
Last week we shared the full before and after of our Coolum Airbnb project. This week, the slightly more useful follow-up: the actual lessons we keep coming back to every time we work on a short-stay apartment. If you own a holiday let, a city pad you rent on weekends, or you are quietly side-eyeing a tired beach unit in your portfolio, this one is for you.
None of these are about spending more. They are about spending the right way.
1. Mix hardwearing leather with easy-to-clean upholstery
In a short-stay apartment every soft surface is going to take a beating. Sunscreen-streaked towels on the sofa, wet swimmers on the dining chairs, kids on the armchair with red zooper doopers. The apartments that survive that and still photograph well three years later all do the same thing: they mix hardwearing leather with upholstery you can actually clean.
Our rule of thumb for Coolum was simple. Anywhere a guest is likely to plonk (sofa, armchair, dining chair seats) we specified full-aniline leather or a high-rub-count performance fabric, the Sunbrella, Crypton and Warwick Halostyle weaves that look beautiful and shrug off red wine. Anywhere a guest is likely to lean (cushion fronts, bed runners, throws) we used softer, more decorative fabric, but always in removable, washable covers.
The result is an apartment that reads layered and quietly luxurious in the listing photos, and forgives a spilled glass on a Friday night without a panicked text to the cleaning team. A few of the moves that keep paying for themselves:
· A leather sofa in a warm tan or chocolate instead of linen or boucle. Hides marks, ages beautifully, wipes clean.
· Performance upholstery on the dining chair seats, in any colour that is not white.
· Removable, washable covers on every decorative cushion. Launder between guests, replace cheaply when they wear out.
· Indoor outdoor weave rugs in the bedrooms and as bathroom accent runners. Resistant to sand, water, sunscreen, every Sunshine Coast hazard.
2. One palette, every room
Short-stay apartments are small. The cardinal sin is treating each room like its own little design project, which is what we see most often. A tan main bathroom, a grey ensuite, a white laundry, a beige kitchen splashback. The brain registers the apartment as four tired rooms instead of one cohesive home.
For Coolum we set a single palette across every wet room: a soft, neutral wall tile in a vertical stack, white stone tops, walnut joinery, brushed brass tapware. Same language repeated.
The result is an apartment that feels designed, even though the individual selections are not extravagant.
3. Spend the money where the camera lands
Listing photos do not show the whole apartment. They show four or five hero moments. The vanity. The shower. The bath corner. The laundry shelf. That is where your spend needs to live. Where the moments happen and guests feel relaxed.
In the ensuite, the original room had a mountain of mirror panel, multiple basins, a tired marble surround, and not a single moment a camera could fall in love with. We pulled it apart and gave it one genuinely beautiful moment: a soft pebble mirror, a wall-mounted brass mixer, peonies on the bench. The rest of the room supports it. Suddenly the listing has a hero shot.
4. Pick finishes the cleaning team can actually maintain
This is the lesson that quietly saves owners thousands of dollars over the life of a property and rarely makes it into design articles. A bathroom looks beautiful for the photographer. It then has to look beautiful for a cleaning team running between stays with sixty minutes and a checklist.
The original Coolum powder room had a charcoal bench top and a dark mosaic feature wall. Beautiful for ten minutes, exhausting forever. Every water spot showed, every speck of toothpaste needed a wipe, and the grout lines collected everything. We specified pale, full-tile walls (fewer grout lines), light stone tops(forgiving), and tapware finishes that do not fingerprint. The cleaning team noticed before the first guest did.
5. The art counts
Guests will not write a review about your art and styling. They will, however, post a photo of it if it is unexpectedly beautiful. And they will absolutely take a photo of the moment the light hits it they way it was intended.
The takeaway
A short-stay refresh does not need the biggest budget in the building. It needs a cohesive scheme, considered hero moments, durable materials, and a few small details that lift the whole place. That is the Design Concierge brief in a single sentence.
If you have an apartment, a holiday house or a rental that is not pulling its weight on the booking platforms, send us a message. We are happy to look at your listing photos with you and tell you exactly where a small spend will move the needle.
Collaboration never goes out of style.
