7 Small Home Improvements That Make a Big Difference

After being stuck at home for so many months, you may be starting to get tired of your home’s current decor style. However, you don’t need to completely gut and redo any of the rooms in your home in order to refresh your decor. Below are a few small ways that you can make a big difference in your home.

Make Your Kitchen Shelving Open

Open shelving may seem like a concept that would take a lot of time and energy to have done, but in reality, it won’t take too long. All you have to do is remove the cabinet doors from your kitchen cabinets, fill the screw holes with wood putty, sand the putty down flat once it’s dry, and then paint that patch to match the rest of your cabinets.

Once you’ve successfully converted your cabinetry to open cabinetry, you can rearrange your dishware to fit the look of your kitchen. Pinterest has a lot of great inspiration for fun ways to arrange plates, mugs, and glasses that you want to have displayed in your kitchen.

Shine Wood Floors

If you have wood floors in your home, they may start to look lackluster over time. To counteract this and make your flooring look like it’s brand new, you can deep clean the floors and look for a wood polish specifically made for flooring. When you polish your floors they’ll shine like they did the day there were installed, which can make your home look totally refreshed.

Reorganize Bookcases

If you have bookshelves in your home, reorganizing them can make a big difference in how the room containing your bookshelves looks. If you currently have your books organized by the author, you can change them around by organizing them according to the color of the spine of the book. This is a fun way to organize your books because you have the chance to place them in rainbow order or to create a pattern if you want to. You can also remove any dust jacket from hardcovers if you want a more subtle change that will give your book collection the appearance of an old home library.

If your books are mostly for show and you don’t really reach for them very often, you can turn all of the books around so that the spine is facing the wall and the pages are facing out. This works best if you have a cream or beige in the color scheme of the room. However, beware — you won’t be able to tell your books apart, so if you do read from your collection, this won’t be very helpful to you.

Mix Your Metals

Adding in a few new pieces of wall decor or updating your past wall decor is a great way to refresh the decor of a room, and making those new pieces metallic can make things a little more fun. Metalworking as an art form can create some really cool and interesting pieces, and the metalworkers creating them have control over all elements of their material, like chip removal or adding corrosion control, because of their metalworking fluids. You can look for local artists that have created metal artworks or you can find metal wall decor pieces at many home decor stores. Because these pieces are often 3D and have interesting textures and appearances, they can add a lot of interest and dimension to a room.

Add Greenery

Flowers and houseplants are a wonderful way to add something new to your home and change up the decor without completely changing everything about a room. You can add living flowers, dried flowers, or houseplants to any room to give it a completely refreshed feeling and look — it all depends on what you’re trying to achieve. The floral industry is worth more than $100 billion for a reason — we love to see fresh flowers sitting around our homes, and buying yourself a bouquet is a great way to feel like you’re treating yourself without breaking the bank. If your local grocery store has a floral section, pick up a bouquet or two and place the flowers in vases around your home. The vases themselves can add to a room if you pick a statement piece or something in a fun finish, like a metallic or crystal vase.

You can even apply this idea to your bathroom. Eucalyptus clippings can be hung from your showerhead to bring a refreshing smell to the bathroom every time you shower. Even once the sprigs have dried, you get a great smell from them, and they’re also very pretty. Some house plants, such as pothos and philodendrons, enjoy humidity and will do well in a bathroom as long as there is a window for some sunlight.

Upgrade light switch covers

A small thing that can have a big impact on a room is switching out the outlet and light switch plates for ones that match your room. The standard white plates may look nice in your room, but changing them up by installing metallic, painted, or otherwise fun plates can make a big difference. This small detail can tie together different accents in the room or just give your space a slightly elevated look as a whole.

Schedule an HVAC Checkup

Although you can’t see your HVAC system, a malfunctioning system can make your home a significantly less comfortable place to be. If you’re constantly irritated because you’re too hot or cold, you may think there are things wrong with your home’s decor that actually aren’t too bad. Before you make any real changes to your decor, make sure to check out your home’s central systems and ensure that they’re working properly. An HVAC system usually lasts around 15 years, so if it’s been longer than that since you had your system replaced, it’s probably time for a call to a repair service.

To make your decor feel updated and refreshed, you don’t necessarily have to redo everything in a room. Smart with these small update ideas and if there’s a bigger remodel or redecoration in your future, you can start to work towards it with small steps.