Renovating to Make Your Home Feel Brand New

There’s nothing worse than feeling as if your home isn’t quite as fresh and modern as it used to be. Obviously, you could say this is a sign of the times. Nothing stays “new” forever, especially with teenage boys in the house. But you don’t have to let your house fall into disrepair. You should feel warm and welcome in your own home. While this doesn’t mean you need a glitzy, fancy home with all the latest trends in terms of design (although let’s face it, that would be nice), you should feel as if your home is clean and cozy. As we’ll discuss throughout this article, minimalism and spaciousness are the two defining features of a well-designed home. It’s one of the things we are working on at our apartment for 2018.

This renovation project should have the end goal of making your home feel brand new, essentially. And you should aim to make your home feel modern in the long term too. That means you shouldn’t follow trends – it’s all about making your house look timeless. Of course, it’s all well and good talking about how much you’d like to improve your home but you probably have no idea as to where you should start. I know I didn’t! So here are some pointers to help you on your mission to renovate in order to make your home feel brand new and less cluttered.

Clean and De-Clutter

First of all, you should aim to clean and declutter your house. The word “renovation” might make you think of knocking walls down and building new things from scratch, but less is more. You shouldn’t be aiming to add things to your house, necessarily, but to strip it down to its bare essentials first. Trends come and go, but minimalism is an aesthetic choice that doesn’t go out of fashion. Why? Well, spaciousness doesn’t just look good – it feels good. Your family home should feel large and welcoming rather than cramped and stress-inducing.

Go through each room in your house and think carefully about the things you do or don’t want to keep. You need to think on a practical level because we’re all guilty of hoarding perhaps a little more than we might realize. Make sure you keep only want you really need. Your goal should be to strip down your house to the possessions that really add some value to your home’s design and to the lives of you and your family members. Remember, minimalism is the goal. Plus, decluttering can be helpful with regards to the rest of your renovation project. You could sell the things you no longer need but which still hold some value; that money could go towards the rest of your home improvements.

Fix the Lighting

Whilst you’ve got your DIY hat on, there’s a lot you can do to renovate your home and improve its aesthetic by focusing on lighting. You need to feel the vibe of each room in the house. The kitchen, for example, needs bright lighting for the purpose of practicality; you need to be able to see in the work area, obviously. But when it comes to the lounge area or the bedroom, warmer lighting is more appropriate as you want to feel relaxed and cozy in such an environment. Warm lighting also looks really good shining down on dining room tables, giving your space a great contrast.

You can also fix the lighting in your home by repainting the walls in your house. Go for a neutral color such as white that will naturally reflect the daylight pouring in through the windows. You could also opt for neutral color themes throughout the house, with furnishings and other aspects of your home’s design, so as to help to brighten your home on the whole. Basic improvements such as this will also create a minimalistic vibe around your house; a neutral design gives you the option to add colors and other design features to your house in the future without the worry of themes clashing with one another.

Do More With Your Home’s Existing Design

You don’t always need to fix things by buying more and more stuff. If you care about the environment, your bank balance, and keeping your home from becoming over-cluttered once again then you should aim to simply do more with your home’s existing design. Upcycling is a great way to improve your home and make it feel brand new without having to actually buy an excessive amount of new things.

For example, an old sofa can be improved with a stylish throw covering it. And rearranging your home’s furnishings can make a huge difference to its design too. Remember, spaciousness is your goal. Think about ways in which you could make rooms feel larger. Too many dark spots around your home will make the design feel darker and gloomier than it is. You should leave the space around windows open; give this area room to breathe so as to let the light in. Give the illusion of a house that’s larger than it really is.

Utilize Your Available Space

Continuing from the previous point, you can do a lot to make your home feel brand new by reinventing the space you already have available. Most households waste potential space. You’ve already decluttered, of course, but there’s more you can do on top of this. Think about ways in which you could better store your remaining possessions. You could put up additional shelving units on walls to give new homes to more of your belongings; that way, there’s fewer pieces of clutter littering the house. You could even get creative with storage space. You could create a storage cabinet under the stairs, for example, or store belongings under people’s beds.

Additionally, you could convert some otherwise-unused space in your house. Rather than wasting money and time by building a conservatory, you could convert your garage, attic, or basement to create a brand new room. This could make your home feel so much larger. You could create a games room or a new lounge area for the family; this could help you to space out some of the possessions cluttering up the rest of your home. You could even give the room a secondary function as a guest room by getting a Japanese futon; contemporary furnishings such as this are perfect if you’re looking for a minimalistic design, as a futon takes up much less space than a traditional bed. Designing your home with spaciousness in mind is all about cutting down on the clutter, as stated earlier.

Spruce Up The Kitchen

Your kitchen is still the heart of your home, as stereotypical a comment as that may be. You and your family should feel as if this room is more than a place in which you gather to eat food (or cook food, in the case of the parents). The kitchen should feel like a warm and inviting place in which the whole family can gather to talk, laugh, and have fun together. It’s a special place, or it can be if you put a little love into it. As discussed earlier, a lick of paint can make the world of difference to a room. You could repaint your kitchen cabinets to give them that “brand new” vibe, rather than spending a lot of money to replace the entire kitchen. A dose of DIY can often be enough.

Spruce Up Your Exterior

It’s important for your home to make a good first impression. If you want your house to feel brand new then think about the ways in which you could spruce up your exterior. A freshly-painted door and driveway that’s regularly hosed down are two examples of ways in which you can keep your home feeling brand new from the outside. As for your garden, you could create a new patio area so as to give it some manmade class and luxury. A dining table, some comfortable seating, and perhaps even a gazebo are all examples of ways in which you could spruce up your exterior and keep your garden feeling like more than a neglected patch of land.