What actually makes a site feel expensive

People say "expensive" when they mean "considered". Three things do most of the work.

Spacing. Cheap sites are crowded. Give a headline room and it reads as confidence.

Type. One good pairing, two weights, sensible line height. Most templates fail here first.

Motion with intent. Things should move because something changed, not because a library was installed. A fade on scroll, a small lift on hover, and nothing that fights the scrollbar.

Everything else is polish: real contrast, consistent radii, images that are not stretched. None of that requires a big budget. It requires someone caring about the details for a few extra hours.