Inspired by recent advances in singular SPDE theory, we use the Poincar\'e inequality on Wiener space to show that controlled complementary Young regularity is sufficient to obtain Gaussian rough paths lifts. This allows us to completely bypass assumptions on the 2D variation regularity of the covariance and, as a consequence, we obtain cleaner proofs of approximation statements (with optimal convergence rates) and show the convergence of random Fourier series in rough paths metrics under minimal assumptions on the coefficients (which are sharper than those in the existent literature).