Tips for a budget-friendly DIY home upgrade

T-Mag Wednesday 18/August/2021 18:42 PM
By: Statepoint
Tips for a budget-friendly DIY home upgrade

 As a homeowner, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by necessary renovations and all the things you’d like to accomplish around your property. If your list of updates is long, but your time and budget are strapped, remember, even small changes can make a big impact.

Here are simple, affordable ways to make your space feel like new.

Use bright and bold colours. It’s common to keep interiors neutral with trendy grays and off-whites, occasionally adding in pops of colour with accessories or accent walls. If you’re looking to take a unique approach to rejuvenating a room, consider adding bright and bold hues to your walls. Take inspiration from the outdoors, fruity drinks or blue skies to evoke emotions of joy with vivid greens, pinks or blues.

Embrace patterns in unexpected places. You may think of patterns for playrooms or children’s bedrooms, but have you ever considered using them to create a focal point in your kitchen, dining room or even your patio?

With just a few tools, including paint, brushes and tape, you can add striped or checkered designs to walls, tables and floors. Creating a pattern doesn’t have to mean splurging on a variety of paint colours. You can create subtle variety by alternating high gloss and matte finish paints, or by adding varying amounts of white paint to create multiple shades of the same base colour.

However you create the pattern, having the right tape will be critical to avoid paint bleed from stripe to stripe.

Create calming spaces. While old homes have unique character, outdated features can make the task of modernizing interiors feel like a major undertaking.

For bathrooms, it’s simple and affordable to sand down what you have and refresh it with a coat of paint. Consider giving boring, outdated square tiles a contemporary look with different tones of gray. You can take it a step further by updating the vanity with deep green paint and gold accents.

When you’re finished, you’ll have a sanctuary from your daily stresses created efficiently and affordably.

Add personal pops of style. Think about the spaces where you spend a lot of time doing things you may not always enjoy – like the office or laundry room. Give these spaces a little TLC. Add fresh colour to the walls, organise and hang photos of your favorite places to balance energy, encourage productivity and make everyday tasks feel less like chores.

Dedicate areas for happy moments. Do you have that one spot that you’re not sure what to do with? It could be a nook or the basement. Use these areas as places to live well and embrace the calming, happy moments in life, like relaxing with family, reading a good book or playing a board game.

Add comfy, cosy textures of knit throw blankets, worn leather sofas or knobby rugs. Consider comforting, familiar shades like navy, light blues and greys, and cognac. These colours and textures work well on fireplaces, bookshelves or walls.