What makes the interior of a home look fancy or expensive to you? Can you tell if the velvet in the picture is real? What do you consider to be “real” velvet? Silk or polyester? How high should the pile be? Would you consider the luxury bar chair in the picture to be a splurge or a save?

There are a lot of great reasons to buy the highest quality home furnishings. Being fancy is not one of them. Depending on the piece of decor, it’s quite possible that no one other than yourself will even know how amazing your purchase was.

In the case of velvet fabrics, polyester isn’t really considered to be “fake”. Most of the velvet furniture you buy will be upholstered with a polyester velvet. The chair in the picture sells for as much as $250, but I purchased it for $70 as it was returned to the manufacturer for a manufacturing imperfection invisible to the casual observer.

The same chair if it were upholstered with a silk velvet might retail for closer to $500, but at the higher price point very few manufacturers would produce it. For a chair like this, the-value add to your interior of splurging on a $500 chair compared to saving on the one I purchased for $70 would be almost negligible.

A lot of contemporary furniture available in stores today is derivative. Current styles are heavily influenced by famous designers of centuries past, and, unless your friends are design nerds they’re unlikely to know the difference between an authentic Hollywood Regency coffee table and a current design that was simply inspired by historic ideas.

For a little perspective on keeping up with the Joneses, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have both spoken about the fact that they shopped at IKEA as young adults like everyone else. Here’s a little reading for homework.

Bottom line. If you’re trying to impress your friends, no one is going to be fooled into believing you’re royalty just because your furniture is more expensive than a young Prince Harry’s.

Learn more about historic influences on furniture design here.