Everyone wants their home to look beautiful, and perhaps like it’s worth more than it is. Most of us won’t be able to afford a manor house anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean we can’t care for the property we’ve got. Even if you love your home, and you’re proud that you own it, you still might want to make some upgrades. You can make your home look more expensive, even if it isn’t. There are changes you can make to the inside and outside of your property to give it more of an air of class and luxury. It doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money to make a difference. You could use your savings to make a change now and then, or take out a home improvement loan.

New Fixtures

One of the quickest ways to improve the look of your home is to update outdated fixtures. Your lights are one of the things you can focus on. Old light fixtures can make a room look neglected, even if you have made an attempt to decorate everywhere else. If you have a lighting fixture that’s bringing everything down, it’s time to get rid of it. There are so many different lights you can have in your home. You can use anything from simple spotlight LEDs to extravagant chandelier-style lights. Change the fixtures in one room at a time if you want to spread the cost.

Make Use of Neutrals

If you look at expensive homes, you will see that many of them use lots of neutral colours. There are a few reasons for this, including that neutral shades aren’t going to fall out of fashion. If you go for some bolder colours, you could be bored with them, or they might look out of date in a couple of years. Neutral hues will stand the test of time and give you a good background for adding in accent colours. It’s a good idea to use them for walls and floors, at least, so that it’s easy to keep them in good condition.

Replace Your Doors

Is your front door a cheap-looking PVC monstrosity? What about your interior doors? You might not notice how much your home’s doors can make a difference to the property. They affect how it looks both inside and out. Getting new ones could give your home a complete overhaul. You can shop for new doors online, at places like George Hill timber merchants. Or if you want to see some doors in person, you could find a showroom where you can look at the up close. Think about the colour and the hardware on your new doors. Inside, you might want to use neutral colours. But perhaps you want something more colourful for your front door.

Use Tile in Key Areas

Tiles can make any area of your home look more sophisticated, and they don’t have to cost that much. Before you buy any tiles, you have to be familiar with what you can use where. Some tiles are only suitable for using on walls and aren’t durable enough for floors. You need to consider how much foot traffic you have going over floors you want to tile. You could also use tile to put a backsplash in your kitchen, which you can do yourself if you’re feeling brave enough.

Match Your Hardware

If you have mismatched accessories in your bathroom or kitchen, consider replacing them. You can choose a style or theme you like and match them up instead. For example, replace the taps and towel rail in your bathroom, so they complement each other. Don’t just concentrate on the permanent fittings, either. You can also get other accessories that match your hardware, from soap dishes to toothbrush holders.

Grow Your Garden

If you want to improve the outside of your home too, there’s no better place to start than the front garden. If you don’t have a garden at the front of your home, you might have a small path or other space. You can immediately make your property look like it’s more expensive by upgrading this area. You can’t go wrong with adding some plants, either in pots or planted in a space you have available. Of course, make sure that you keep everything well-maintained. Your garden will say that you make the effort to keep it looking beautiful. If you’re not much of a gardener, you can buy plants that don’t need much care.

It doesn’t take much to make your home look more expensive. A few affordable touches could give it a sophisticated appearance.

We’ve been in our house15months now and still have lots of little bits to sort out.  When we moved in I saw potential in 2 little spaces in our kitchen one been the understairs cupboard and the other been like a utility that was called the “coal house”.  The previous owners used both as junk storage.  This is what I have done and it hasn’t cost me much money either.  Just proves you can do a lot with small spaces without breaking the bank.

The utility

This room once was a storage room, painted in a dark horrible colour that made it look dull and dirty, which housed a wooden storage unit full off rubbish, a washing machine, fridge/freezer and general junk. I gave it a lick of white bright paint to make the room look bigger.

It is not a very big room but it is big enough for what I need it for.  There was no worktop there when we moved it, but I said I wanted to add a worktop to be able to put things in there e.g the microwave to keep the worktops in the kitchen free.  So to save a bit of money I phoned round kitchen places to see if I could get a pieces (I only need 1metre length) for as cheap as possible,  Well after phoning round I managed to finally find a company that had a perfectly sized piece for…FREE.  There is still plenty of room aswell both on top and underneath.

Understairs storage cupboard

Again, when we moved in this room was used as a junk room,  We cluttered the room with dog food, alcohol/Beer – Obviously most important thing, coats, ironing board and anything that would fit really.  Then I thought one day I want to maximise this space and make it in to something that was useful.  I said to my dad, can we make this room into a pantry?   He didn’t see why we couldn’t.  With me and my fiance working full-time it was difficult to find time to help my dad get it sorted, other than weekends but we always seemed to have something on.  Finally a few long months May bank holiday Monday arrived and my parents said they would come round and help get it started.  This is what it looked like before, a shell that we used as a junk store, coats, paint, alcohol, ironing board, dog stuff and more….

After a few weeks of cutting and prepping wood and painting it all to give it a nice finish.  Then it was time to cut some battens to create the supports to fix the brackets on to.  It’s not a difficult task but took a good few hours to complete, lots of drilling, screwing and sawing later, These are the end results.

As you can see we made sure there was plenty of spare room at the bottom for the alcohol.

I am in love with my pantry/understairs cupboard (Sad I know), but it has given us so much more space to utilise in other cupboards and drawers.

What spaces have you changed in your house?