Moving into a new home is always a thrill. Whether it’s your first ever home, your next rental or a home for the next stage of your life, that exciting feeling never really changes; it’s a feeling of freedom, of potential, of an opportunity to restate your ambitions and tastes.
It’s easy to talk this way about a big change, but not so easy to get excited about the same prospects a few years into living in your home. New ideas get tired, rooms start to feel a little shabby or dated, and you’re not at all incentivised to make the same changes you might in a new home. Let this be a turning point, though; if you’re feeling like your home needs a refresh, then the following tips may be just what you need to bring your home’s aesthetics back in line with your ambitions.
- Refresh Walls with Colour and Texture
One of the best bang-for-buck improvements you can make to your home is to paint a room. A can of paint, a couple of rollers and half an afternoon is all you need, at minimum, to make a significant change to the feel of a space. You could take this opportunity to follow a new trend, like colour drenching – but you don’t even need to paint a full room to change its vibe. Painting in a feature wall can dramatically change a room’s feel, both aesthetically and dimensionally.
- Upgrade Fixtures for a Modern Touch
Similarly, small changes to permanent fixtures in your home can make a major difference to its aesthetics – especially if they’re fixtures you engage with every day. A new set of door handles can recontextualise your doors for you, just as a new set of bathroom taps can change your relationship with your suite.
Upcycling is also an option here. As an example, you could pull your kitchen cabinet doors off their hinges, spruce them up with a new coat of paint and replace their handles with something different – thus giving you a new kitchen suite without the associated cost.
- Incorporate Statement Lighting
Finally, you would be astonished at how much you can achieve with light alone. Even just throwing up some mirrors in dark hallways can drastically improve their mood – but active lighting can do so much more for living spaces. Statement lighting can be placed to accentuate or contrast; a big pendant light over a dining table can be dramatic and dashing, while some well-placed living-room floor lamps can create shadows in all the right places, for a new take on the room and a newly-defined cosy hangout space.
