Five inexpensive ways to make your house look better
Tired of coming home to the same old same old? Anabela Rea shares ideas from her own interior design toolkit.
Reframe your art
Unless you’re already pretty design-savvy, chances are that the overall framing style of your artwork collection is either nonexistent or chaotic. This could be for a variety of reasons.
If you’re a bohemian type, you may have a habit of sticking things directly on the wall poster-style (naughty) or like to pick up artworks as they come at op-shops.
And sometimes – since art is lovely to give or receive – the bits and pieces on our wall are in frames that weren’t chosen by us.
An eclectic look can suit some places fantastically well, but if you’d like to make your house look more put together, choose one way you’d like to frame your art and use it for the lot.
I was inspired to reframe all my own art in white, deep-box frames with white paper surrounds after visiting textile designer Nellie Ryan at home some years ago, where she did the same. It’s an approach that lends a crisp air while letting the art shine.
A white A2 box frame for an A3 print will set you back just $17 from Kmart.
Refresh your ceilings
Your ceiling is the largest uninterrupted painted surface and zone of negative space in a room. You might not think you spend a lot of time noticing your ceiling, but if something about any room just feels horribly off, I would wager that updating the ceiling would make a substantial difference.
On the very easy end of a ceiling refresh, making your rooms look brighter and fresher could be as simple as giving your ceiling a wipe. You might be surprised how much fly muck and other gunk is up there.
The next level would be painting, and depending on the size of the room or rooms’ ceilings that you’d like to update, this could cost you as little as a couple of hundred dollars. If the room’s all white, be sure to pick a hue that’s a half or quarterstrength of your wall colour.
If you have a wallpapered ceiling, with your own time and labour, you could transform the room from an eyesore to somewhere you can be at ease.
If you have a textured plaster or popcorn ceiling, you’ll need the input of professionals before you disturb it. Ceilings such as these often contain asbestos, so if you have one, make sure you hire an experienced professional to remove it for you.
Evaluate your mood
Your home is the backdrop of your experience. So sit down and ask yourself, does my home make me feel how I would like it to? If not, change what you can.
Consider things such as: How do I want to feel in my bedroom? Is it a place of rest, a space also for hobbies, or does it revolve around displaying my collections or clothes?
How do you actually live and want to live in your kitchen, dining and living areas? Does your use of these spaces change seasonally and if so, what can you do to reorient these spaces for yourself so as to make your home’s appearance, and your experience of it, better?
In the bedroom, a quick fix to make it more peaceful could be as simple as choosing a new duvet cover set in a calm blue or green shade, changing out a gallery wall for a single large print and limiting electronic equipment to other parts of the house.
In the living room, it could mean rearranging your furniture so there are more places for people to sit and directly look at each other while hanging out.
In the kitchen, it could mean reorganising display shelves so that your winter staples like crockpots are more easily accessible, or adding a hard-wearing rug underfoot to warm up cold floors.
Create unity through colour
To make your house look more unified, choose one main colour and one to two accent colours, plus white or black.
You don’t have to buy new things, you can select your palette from what’s already present and then donate, repaint or recover what doesn’t fit.
Think I’m wrong? Walk around your house with a washing basket right now removing the colours that don’t fit the palette.
Yes, you’ll have fewer things on show by the end of it, but you’ll also be able to see if you like your chosen palette, and where the ‘holes’ are of items you might want to buy to bring your home together.
Next time you want to buy a new cushion for the couch, choose something that tones in with your palette. Over time, your home will look a lot more intentionally designed.
Do a mini declutter
I’m a maximalist through and through, but I’ve still got to admit, there’s something incredibly liberating (and kind of magical) about decluttering.
However, it is an activity that can spur feelings of being overwhelmed in some people, so try decluttering slowly and intentionally, zone by zone.
This could be as small as just your bedside table, a bookcase, the mantelpiece or a cupboard.
Aim for progress rather than perfection and, soon enough, your slimmed-down personal accoutrements will be helping your house to look better, seemingly effortlessly.