While everyone dreams of building or buying their dream home, this is simply not possible a lot of the time due to the cost and risk involved.
However, this is not to say you can’t improve your existing home and make it a far more desirable place to live. In fact, while home renovations often cost considerable amounts of money, there are simple and easy ways you can transform the aesthetic of your house without spending huge amounts of cash.
Of course, increasing the desirability of your home is a sensible investment for another reason, too. It will likely increase the value of your property – perhaps considerably – for a relatively little outlay.
It can also improve your mental health, as a decluttered, modern and clean home can transform your mood and become a better place to spend your time.
Here’s how to increase the desirability of your home on a budget:
Rip up your old carpets and lay hard-wearing floors instead
One of the best ways you can improve the desirability of your home on a budget is to get rid of any old, worn carpet and replace it with hard-wearing flooring.
This has a number of benefits.
Firstly, it just looks better. Carpets can wear quickly and show their age prematurely, leading to you ripping them after only a few years. This will cost you a lot of money, effort, and time.
Hard flooring, such as french wood flooring, is by its nature long-lasting and easy to maintain. While you will be worried about stains on your new carpets, wood flooring is far more practical, especially if you have a young family.
A further reason why hardwood flooring can increase the desirability of your home is that you can match it to most wall colors, furniture, and aesthetics, providing you the ideal canvas on which to create your new, more desirable home.
Create feature walls or buy feature furniture
Another easy way to make your house more desirable is to focus on a few large feature items – whether they are bold wall colors, works of art, or items of furniture. This saves you the considerable sum it costs to produce extravagant features, while creating the necessary impact to wow your guests.
These feature items don’t even have to cost much to buy. You don’t have to hang a Rembrandt to make an impact. In fact, second-hand stores can often have the best feature items because they are usually completely different from current trends and fashions.
For instance, why not buy an old Victorian picture frame, take out the picture and paint the frame a striking color, then hang it on the wall. Alternatively, you could buy an old sofa and re-cover it.
The most obvious way to make an impact is to incorporate a strong, imposing color on one wall. By using the power of contrast, you can quickly create a striking interior aesthetic.
These are easy and environmentally friendly ways to make an impact on a limited budget.
Bring a taste of the outdoors inside
Plants and flowers are an increasingly popular way of transforming the look and feel of a room, without costing all that much. For instance, if your bathroom is small and you can’t afford to knock it through or do anything dramatic, you could hang a number of exotic plants in pots beside the bath, or even just use more earthy colors. This will have a calming effect and make your otherwise utilitarian spaces something to enjoy.
Focus on the rooms you actually use most often
Following on from the previous point, if your resources are limited, then you are best served to focus on the rooms you spend the most time in. There’s little worth in renovating the guest bedroom if no one ever uses it, whereas spending money on the kitchen, bathroom, and living room will be valuable investments.
You want to remind yourself of your home’s desirability every day, so by enacting simple changes like a new cooker, a fresh lick of paint, and different flooring in the kitchen; you will get your money’s worth.
If in doubt, focus on the small details
If you can’t afford to put the changes mentioned above into action, then don’t worry. There is still a way to increase the desirability of your home. In fact, this change has the potential to be enjoyed on a daily basis more than all the others.
Take a look at all the touchpoints in your house. It sounds boring, but you wouldn’t buy a car if it had cheap, plasticky door handles or a phone with a flimsy case, and the same is true of your home. If your door handles, cupboards, toilet, and other such items are showing their age, consider investing the money to change them. This seemingly insignificant alteration can instantly give your home a prestigious aesthetic and lift the space.
