Home Improvement
5 Ways to Upgrade Your Home Without Breaking the Bank
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You spend a lot of time in your home. It’s where you sleep, eat most of your meals, and enjoy quality time after a long week of work. Wanting to improve the space where you spend over half of your life just makes sense. Unfortunately, some home improvement projects may be too expensive or time-consuming for your current situation.
The good news is that not every home upgrade has to involve smashing your piggy bank or emptying out your savings account. There are plenty of relatively minor changes you can make that will leave your home feeling practically brand new. If you’re seeking out home improvement ideas that won’t blow your budget, look no further. These five upgrades can provide significant impact for a reasonable cost.
1. Install Ductless Air Conditioning
It’s no fun to be sweltering in your home office or freezing in the den. If your HVAC system isn’t delivering the comfort you expect, you’re in need of a fix. Fortunately, this doesn’t have to involve full-scale replacement of your current system. Instead, look into adding ductless air conditioning, which lets you condition air on a zone-by-zone or even room-by-room basis.
These indoor units use coils to cool the air in a room without needing to be hooked up to a central system. Easy installation and models in small sizes make this a relatively simple addition to any room in need. The cost of energy used to run these units is fairly minimal since you’re not cooling the entire house. It’s certainly a bargain given the comfort you’re getting out of them!
Buying a ductless air conditioning unit outright can be a little spendy, but it’s not as expensive as a full system replacement. You even break up the cost into monthly payments that make the upgrade more feasible for your budget.
2. Create an Accent Wall
A little color can go a long way. You can lend a lot of personality to your home with the simple addition of an accent wall. This wall is painted a different color from the rest of the room, providing a little more pop and flair to the space.
An accent wall can also consist of a coordinating wallpaper, wood paneling, or another wall covering. Your accent wall can even be a hand-painted mural if you want to show off your creative side. Or, if you don’t have a painterly bone in your body, you can commission a local artist to create one for you.
The point is to bring a new side to your home, literally and figuratively, by employing visual contrast. You can find plenty of examples of good accent walls online. Once you’ve decided what you want, it may take no more than a can of paint and a paintbrush to make your vision a reality.
3. Try a New Smart Home Product
Everywhere you look these days, there’s a new smart home product being launched. From video doorbells to smart thermostats, many of these gadgets are well worth investigating. It may not even require an outlet to introduce tech advances to your home that can make daily life easier and more interesting.
One of the most popular home additions is a digital assistant, like Alexa or Siri. Using voice commands, you can ask about the weather forecast, play music on demand, and turn lights on and off. This single device covers a lot of little tasks that add up to a more efficient day.
Many smart home products connect with one another to create a large network of accessibility. Smart appliances, light fixtures, and locks can be activated by your digital assistant or from an app on your phone.
4. Change Up the Lighting
Speaking of lighting, take a look at the light fixtures in your house. How do you honestly feel about them? Are your overhead lights washing out your walls — or worse, you? Perhaps you consider your inherited lamps ugly or the previous owner’s chandelier choice hideous. If your home’s lighting isn’t doing it for you, changing it out could yield a significant improvement in your quality of life.
This upgrade can be as simple as changing the lightbulbs you use. Various models and brands of lightbulbs cast different qualities and intensities of light. You can try a few types to see which lighting you prefer. Swapping incandescent light bulbs with LED versions is also eco-friendly. Since these bulbs emit less heat, they make your home more energy-efficient, lowering your utility bill.
5. Declutter and Deep Clean
Buried underneath the piles of laundry and overflowing junk drawers is a very nice house. Sometimes the best upgrade to your home consists of decluttering spaces and giving them an old-fashioned deep clean. Ridding your mudroom of old coats and unused sports equipment, for example, could yield space for a cookbook shelf or a bill-paying nook. This certainly isn’t the most fun solution, but it’s a very effective — and inexpensive — one.
If it helps you get motivated, try breaking down decluttering and cleaning projects into manageable chunks. You can spend one weekend reorganizing the vanity in your bathroom and a future one scrubbing your kitchen. This way, you can divide and conquer rather than feeling overwhelmed by all the cleaning and organizing that needs to be done. With the clutter gone and the surfaces gleaming, you may refall in love with the home you already have.
The better you feel in your home, the happier you will be with your life. You deserve to live in a place that feels comfortable and inviting, and these simple yet inexpensive home upgrades may do the trick.
Harper Harrison is a reporter for The Hear UP. Harper got an internship at the NPR and worked as a reporter and producer. harper has also worked as a reporter for the Medium. Harper covers health and science for The Hear UP.
