How to have a brighter, lighter and more appealing home?
Adding more light not only makes a property look bigger, it makes the house more appealing and feel homey. Natural light is best but if you’re on a tight budget with limited time frame there are some simple solutions to create a lighter atmosphere. Start with the basics to see if these are enough and if not, you can work on the more complex ideas at the bottom of this article.
- Take down any curtains, raise blinds and open the doors to see how much natural light you have to work with and make an assessment.
- What colour and material is the flooring? Lighter coloured flooring in any material will make your property looks brighter. Lighter coloured wood or floating floorboards will reflect the most light.
- Are the ceilings dull and faded? Repaint with ceiling white for immediate brightness.
- Are the walls dull or dark coloured? Repaint them in a light neutral tone.
- Do you have skirting that is stained dark? Either replace with new or repaint with a white or off white colour.
- Check the colour of the doors and door frames. If dark, repaint white or off white for a clean, bright look.
- How about door knobs? If you have old dark brown colour knobs, change them to new brush aluminium knobs.
- Remove any dark coloured curtains because it makes room feel small and dark. If you really want curtains, select lighter or try sheer curtains, it give privacy but allow lights through.
- Remove dark coloured blinds and replace with white or off white – blinds give a more modern and clean look than curtains.
- Replace coloured light fittings with white or frosted glass.
You’ll find these tips make a great transformation and a huge difference.
Going a couple of steps further:
- Adding skylights. These range from the DIY variety to the ultra sophisticated. Do some research to see if the cost is worthwhile? You may need to install couple skylights to brighten up certain areas. They are great and they will make a huge difference to your property. Having said that, you may to work out in summer, it also bring heat to the house, there are some model on the market have remote shutter to block out the skylight in the hot summer time.
- Older houses tend to have small back doors and small windows. Replacing them with glass doors or bi-fold doors with big glass panel will bring additional lights to the house, it also bring the garden from the outside to the inside. This is the most expensive and it can have the most spectacular results. Check with your builder and your budget to see if it’s a viable option to open it up. This is a fantastic modern look and appealing as it brings the outside in with lots of natural light.
Choose some or all of the above strategies and you’ll find your property looks brighter, lighter, more appealing and with a lot more value added.
More other ideas? We’d love to hear from you, drop us a comment…….
