Photo Credit: ExcellentMetroPainting.com
Whether you’re looking to sell your home or you’re looking to make it more comfortable, doing certain little things towards improving your home will make it look better and feel better to you or potential home buyers. None of these 3 ideas have to cost you a lot of money, though none of them are free either.
1. Paint your house and your walls. Painting the outside of your house is an immediate and stark improvement that everyone will notice, and your neighbors will probably appreciate it. Unless, of course, you paint it hot pink with lime green touches or something else that may be too “loud”. Even painting a house the same color it already is makes it look newer and cleaner.
Painting the walls on the inside of the house will always help spice things up a little. However, the recommendations are different based on whether you’re looking to sell the house or not. If you’re looking to sell, most realtors will recommend that you change any odd or vibrant wall colors to something a bit more sedate, such as an off-white or neutral color. They say this because you’re trying to sell the house, not impress someone else with your sense of style. However, if you’re looking to improve your house and you’re staying in it, why not try something a little bit different, something that fits your style and will show of your design skills – how about hot pink with lime green touches?
Photo Credit: www.BrotherSoft.com
2. Do some minor landscaping around your house. Actually, do it out front, because if people can’t see it, then it’s a waste of time. You don’t even have to do anything big. For instance, my wife took an area of the front yard, stuck big red bricks into the ground in a circular pattern, lined the bottom with black plastic, then stuck a plant in the middle and surrounded the entire thing with dark, black soil and some flowers. It made the house distinctive on the street, took only a couple of hours, and the neighbors love it, not to mention how nice it looks when viewed from inside our home. Don’t ignore the backyard, but if you’re on a tight budget, curb appeal, curb appeal, curb appeal.
3. Change the lighting. Something most people feel is that they don’t have enough lighting in many of their rooms. This can be solved in many ways. You can add table lamps, floor lamps, an elegant lighting fixture with more bulbs or track lighting. You can also go to a fluorescent lighting system of some kind. Something else about lighting is that there are a lot of options to save energy without losing any of the luminosity, which can save you money on utility bills and will end up being an added benefit for any future home buyer.
What are some of the things you’ve done to improve the look and feel of your house?
Mitch Mitchell is a consultant who writes and participates in many different fields, including real estate finance issues. 
Excellent tips – once Spring rolls around a lot of people are going to start working on improving their homes. But sometimes it’s just too much trouble to make a lot of renovations and it makes more sense to just move to a new home.
We just painted the exterior of our home and it’s by far the most drastic change you can make to enhance the look of your home.
Very good tips. It is amazing the change a few flowers and painting can do. Something so cheap can def. go a long way when selling a home.
Painting is definitely a fast and fairly inexpensive way to get curb appeal. It is also important when welling or renting a home to make sure the windows are clean. If the windows have been neglected, then it will make the home look darker inside due to all the dirt and dust. Roof cleaning is also something to consider. Black tile roofs can be made to look new and can be brought back close to their original color if they are pressure washed.
Great selection of budget tips which are both easy on the pocket and make a huge difference when it comes to sell. With regards to painting, it’s a very good point to use common colors which will appeal to most people’s taste.
Useful info, but I’m not sure how long it will take me.
Excellent advice. You are right about how the difference making little changes improves the overall look of a home. Sprucing up the outside of the home by updating flowerbeds, keeping the lawn mowed and trimming the hedges will go a long way for adding curb appeal.
Thanks for the comments. Most of these things are quick and easy, except for painting the outside of one’s home. I’ve learned that I’m not a painter, so on that one I had to hire someone.
I’ve always heard that a fresh coat of paint and making sure the kitchen and bathroom are immaculate will sell a home. That and location, location, location. Thanks for the tip on lighting so I will try that to set a better mood.
Some good tips here. Painting always helps as does lighting. Tidying and getting rid of old stuff would help too or moving it out of the way for a while like into storage. It means you could move things around and see how you liked rooms in different ways without throwing anything away.
With reference to the improvement of homes a “home automation” system is definitely a great way to bring your home into the 21st century by making some of those smaller processes that little bit more effortless. Ultimately you would need to assess if the cost is worth it to you.
Tip number three can indeed work wonders. My husband and I changed the lighting in our family room a couple of months ago. We never really liked spending time in there, but when we switched the lights from fluorescent white to warmer tones and a few lamps and pin lights thrown here and there, the effect was awesome. Now, we love spending both quiet and rowdy evening there with the kids!
Don’t forget the improvements or repairs of safety systems like the smoke detector or sprinkler systems. Burglar alarms should also be looked at. Maybe even check up on or add shelter for natural disasters like earthquakes.
Very good tips! I repainted the outside of my house and patio and it instantly made my home look just like new. Now time to think of what I’m going to do with the interior walls. Decisions, decisions.
It’s always worth cleaning the exterior of your home, re-painting the wood areas every now and then. Not too keen on houses which are painted fully on the outside. I would always stick with neutural tones on the inside walls, quite popular at the moment. Even adding wallpaper on one wall can keep it fresh. Quite often when you go with a specific colour scheme, it seems to go out of fashion quite easily.
It’s always worth adding the WOW factor to your house. It’s a great way to ad value to it, and improve the look. And like you said it doesn’t take much. A good paint job can completely transform the look of your house, and it’s worth looking at some pictures for inspiration and colour scheme ideas.
Cheers, A.
Great tips, Mitch! It’s amazing how a bit of landscaping can turn a house into a home. My wife and I recently moved into our new home. It will be much better and spacious home for our much awaited li’l bundle of joy when she comes out in July.
When we were trying to sell our old home, we hired a gardener to do a bit of landscaping in the garden and around the porch. Nothing fancy, really. Just a few flowers and shrubs here and there. The over all impact, though, was stunning. We almost did not want to move out anymore!
The best way to improve a home is lighting. The best design in the world will not look good unless it is illuminated well. A lighting control system can show your home at it’s best whilst saving energy!
Hi there, Mitch! You’ve got some sensible tips here. Also, I’d like to add that, making use of fresh flowers can do great wonders for the look and feel of any home. It may be tedious — considering the short lifespan of such sensitive living things — but the effect can indeed close the deal for you. Fresh flowers by the window, on the center table or by the living room couch can certainly add warmth to any room in a home.
I have to admit I’m stunned and happy folks still enjoy this post. Obviously I think there are many ways one can set their home up for sale that would impress buyers and all of you have offered great ideas. My main thought was “biggest bang for your buck” without breaking the bank if you can help it. My belief was that with my suggestions everything could be done for less than $2,000, in some cases less than $1,000 if you did the work on your own.
We all love music. A nice multiroom audio system would play your favourite songs all around the home, but also a different music in a diferent rooms could be played. A homes with this kind of systems would be charming new buyers and definitely add a value to the property.
My wife surprised me a couple of months ago by painting an entire wall in our living room a deep, navy blue — my favorite color. It was such a refreshing sight and it certainly contributed a lot to the newfound warmth and aesthetics of our home.