5 Reasons Your Renovations Might Not Be Working

Renovations can be a lot of work, especially if you’re doing it yourself without help from a contractor or designer. It can take weeks or even months to collect your ideas and flesh out some plans, and it’s even more daunting to actually put in the work to transform your home. Things can get a little crazy in your home if you aren’t prepared, and it can also cost a significant amount of money in furniture, materials, and tools!

But all of that hard work has to be worth it, right? Well, that’s what we’d all like to see, but the reality is that it’s not always going to end with a great result. In fact, there are many people and families that spend weeks and thousands on renovations, only to end up with a sub-par result that just doesn’t live up to their expectations.

Were your ideas not as great as you thought? Did you do something wrong? Do you need to spend money? Whatever the reason might be, things like this are surprisingly common and can be extremely off-putting for people. It might even turn them off the idea of doing renovations ever again, especially if they put in a lot of effort and money into the project.

So to help out, we’re going to explain what could’ve gone wrong and how to fix it. It’s not too late to change things around, so let’s get started!

Have you changed the lighting at all?

Lighting can have a surprisingly big impact on your rooms. It’s a crucial aspect that helps with functionality (you can’t see in your rooms if they aren’t lit, after all!) but it can also change the look and feel of your rooms. For instance, lighting setups can create different kinds of atmospheres. Warm lighting can look cosy, while cooler lighting is more suitable for a kitchen or a more “serious” room like an office.

You can also use lighting to highlight certain elements of your home. A common example of this is to use things like diffused lighting around your television or decorations to make them pop a little when the lights are off.

Lastly, you can also install different kinds of smart lights for more functionality, such as automatically turning on and off when needed, or controlling them remotely. Smart lighting can also change hue and brightness whenever you want, making them really flexible to create different kinds of atmospheres.

Have you added some decor items?

Decor plays a really important role in creating an atmosphere in your home. They can be used to brighten up a room with happy and joyful items, or it can be made to look more serious by adding things like trophies and art decor paintings.

These decor items can be anything from pictures, posters, and figurines, to functional objects like a black bannister on your stairs, golden door knobs, or even curtains with patterns. Every colour, pattern, and texture can drastically change the way your rooms feel, hence why it’s just so important to add these seemingly minor elements to your rooms during and after renovation.

Think of it this way: decor is a way to influence the overall look and feel of your home by reflecting your personal interests and tastes. However, it can also be used to create different atmospheres for certain rooms. Home offices can look clean, tidy, and free from personalised elements to stop distracting you from work.

However, bedrooms can fully reflect the person sleeping in them by attaching posters, photographs, trinkets, and more personal items.

Have you added some functional home upgrades?

Everyone’s looking for something different from a renovation. Some people do it just to freshen up the home and make it feel new. Others want to make their house a home by personalising it with lots of different items. But there’s also a group of people that want to renovate to install home upgrades that change the way they live. Here are some examples.

• Smart home upgrades that allow you to control your home remotely, or give you the ability to set timers on various appliances such as your coffee machine or lights.

• Space upgrades include things like additional wall storage, cabinets, shelves, or even replacing furniture with options that include storage space.

• Comfort upgrades can involve replacing furniture to make it more comfortable to use, adding a new radiator to heat a room, or even replacing floorboards for carpets for a softer feel.

• Eco-friendly upgrades such as a composting bin, solar panels, LED lights, and other home elements that are friendlier to the environment.

These are just a couple of ideas for functional home upgrades. If you feel like something is missing after renovation, then it might just be because you’re living your days the exact same way–only there are a few things moved around and you don’t feel as comfortable because it’s different.

However, if you were to change the way you live in your home, then it can make those renovations far more impactful!

Have you changed the colour palette?

Depending on your home and personal tastes, changing the colour palette can either be an incredibly difficult task or something that takes no time at all. You could potentially just swap the upholstery on your furniture, the rugs in your room, or even the curtains on the window.

However, you might also need to move furniture to paint the walls, completely remove furniture, and so on. There are two main scenarios here:

• You feel like the new colours are too different. In this case, you might just be disappointed in your home renovation because it doesn’t look as good as you thought. Maybe the colours you used were wrong, or perhaps you don’t like the colour as much as you thought you would.

• You feel like there’s not enough of a change. Maybe you thought that painting the walls was too much work because you had to move the furniture, or perhaps you just weren’t confident in painting different parts of the home. Thankfully, you can still change your mind and get to work transforming those rooms, or you can alternatively just add a splash of colour here and there. It could be a new tablecloth, more paintings, different curtains, and so on.

Depending on your personal preferences, you might find that changing the colour palette of your rooms has the opposite effect to what you had expected. Some people like that things are different, while others regret their decision to change the colours and would prefer it to go back to how it was.

Have you checked on the quality of your renovation?

Whether you’ve renovated your rooms yourself or have called an expert in, you should always check on the quality of the renovation as this is what could be disappointing you.

Maybe you’re seeing weird streaks of paint on the walls because of a poor painting job, or perhaps your home just hasn’t been cleaned up properly after the renovation happened. Small things like this can easily get on our nerves and it’ll be really noticeable later on.

So if you’re going to renovate your home, you need to do it properly and put in some extra effort to make it look great. Make sure you practise techniques like painting, clean up the house after renovating it, and make sure you’ve installed everything correctly and ensured it works and looks great in your home before you settle on it!

Got Something to Add?

Share your top renovation tips with us in the commetns section below.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Helen, Nial, Lewis and Mason.