You don’t have to spend a fortune to transform the way your home and garden (or balcony) look, function and feel – sometimes the smallest, most affordable touches can revitalise a space entirely.
From light switches, to storage jars, there are dozens of easy, budget-friendly ways to improve your home with just a small amount of effort and ingenuity, and make your home better to live in and even – if you’re trying to sell – more appealing to potential buyers.
The interiors and garden experts judging this year’s London Home Design Awards offered their top tips on the small changes homeowners and renters can make to transform their homes, no matter how big or small.
Style up your kitchen
Make your dry goods decorate your kitchen and banish ugly plastic packaging with a collection of glass jars displayed on a worktop or open shelving.
“If you’ve got open shelving buy some of those lovely jars that cost a couple of quid and have your sugar or your flour or your pasta in it,” suggests cookery writer and TV presenter Rachel Khoo. “It’s the simplest thing ever but it looks so lovely when it’s out on display.”
See things in the right light
“The best thing is what I call ‘plug-in lighting’,” says design journalist Barbara Chandler.
“Lighting can be very sophisticated lighting that you have incorporated into your scheme as you go along and you have your dimmers and your rows of recessed spots but you can actually do a lot to your room to make it work better and feel better with things you plug in.”
Or, if your lamp game is strong already, think about the details you’re going to use every day that often slip under the radar – the “touch points” as Mad About the House author Kate Watson-Smyth calls them.
“You don’t have to spend a huge amount of money on them but just having a nice light switch rather than the white plastic generic one or a nice electric cable in a colour makes all the difference.”
Be a colour chameleon
“Take a weekend off and use some paint,” suggests Dan Hopwood, former president of the British Institute of Interior Design. “Paint’s great. It’s not expensive, you can do it yourself, you can change the look of a room completely – and if you don’t like it you can just do it again.”
Jazz up your garden
"Get some nice furniture in statement colours,” suggests Isabelle Palmer, founder of the Balcony Gardener. “If you can’t afford it then recycle, paint some old furniture.”
Bring the outside in
Victoria Harrison, editor of Houzz, noted the recent trend for creating outdoor ‘rooms’ instead of gardens and recommends reversing the trend inside too.
“If there’s just one small change that you want to make to your home I think houseplants,” she says.
