Small Upgrades to Enhance Your Home Life

Full-on renovations are the most powerful method for transforming your home, but don’t be fooled into believing that you have to take on significant debt to make your home a better place in which to live. Strategic, thoughtful, small upgrades to enhance your space can create an impact on both your comfort level and your interior style. Choose just a few affordable luxuries, implement them as you are able, and prepare to fall in love with your home all over again. 

Add Richly Textured Plants

It’s no secret that houseplants are an excellent way to beautify your living spaces. Plants are available in a dazzling array of colors, scents, and sizes; they cleanse the air you breathe. Lastly, they can be matched with complementing vessels of nearly endless colors and styles.

Still, you can take your houseplant configuration to the next level by layering textures. Broad, leafy, tropical plants are ideal behind furniture, in awkward nooks, and atop corner tables. Next, plants with mid-sized leaves and more intricate textures can be added in front of or slightly nestled between your large-leaved choices. Finally, plants with riotous colors, small, densely packed leaves, or foliage with geometric patterns can take their place front and center.

While you will naturally have to puzzle out what enhances your home best, approaching greenery as a textural enhancement can be a low-cost game-changer. 

Pepper Your Space with Statement Colors

The 2010s were undeniably a time when we were collectively besotted with soft, neutral hues. Beige, greige, gray, cream, white, and camel were everywhere, and rich hues were an unexpected, bold choice. This is the 2020s, though, and nostalgia for the maximalism of the 1990s and early 2000s is raging back into houses everywhere. 

Even if you aren’t ready to paint your walls purple and decorate with piles of golden accessories, the modern way to incorporate bright colors is likely much more appealing. A single table, a unique armchair, a pile of complex throw pillows, or a vintage Oriental rug that anchors your room - these can all be approachable pathways to expanding your decorative repertoire. 

If you miss the days of bold accent walls, consider an elevated wallpaper pattern. Install it on a small wall, in your home office, along a bland hallway, or in your guest bathroom, and you’ll feel an instant sense of rejuvenation. 

Make Your Shelves Speak Volumes

Most of us have a bookcase, entertainment cabinet, or single shelf that could be reimagined as a single piece of a boutique installment. If viewing your shelves from a purely aesthetic perspective leaves you discontented, start by clearing one shelf. Then, create a purposeful display of items, books, or accessories you adore. 

Group them by shape, color, or purpose; you can’t go wrong as long as the resulting focal point is one your eye loves to linger on.

Recharge Your Home One Piece at a Time

Contrary to what you see daily on social media, we’re not all millionaires (or billionaires.) Don’t allow the constant flaunting of implied wealth shake your confidence in your own aesthetic sensibilities! You should add pieces to your home simply because you enjoy them.

As the years go by, you can slowly build your thoughtful collection of treasures via estate sales, flea markets, consignment stores, and in the garages of friends who are moving away. Whether or not they are considered of the moment or upscale, you will experience enhanced joy within your home by following your heart. Snap up your treasures, display them as you choose, and don’t second-guess things that make you happy.  

Invest In Quality Hangers

If you’re still reusing wire hangers from the cleaners, plastic hangers from your aunt, or a jumbled collection of hangers you’ve collected year upon year, stop. You aren’t doing yourself or your clothing any favors by clinging to hangers that can tear, stretch, and distort your clothing. At the very least, their mismatched sizes and shapes make them highly likely to tangle anytime you work with them!

Instead, thick stainless hangers covered with a soft silicone layer, classic wooden hangers, or luxurious satin-wrapped padded hangers are all viable choices to enhance your daily interactions with your closet.

Slip on Some Better Sheets

Do you remember slipping into a freshly made bed and relaxing between crisp, sleek, thick sheets? This could have been weeks ago in a hotel room, or 25 years ago at your grandparents’ house, but if it wasn’t last night in your own bedroom, consider treating yourself to some better bedding.

Look for cotton percale sheets made with long cotton fibers, soft linen, or bamboo-blend sheets. Truly great bedding is a bit of an investment, but you’ll reap the benefits for potentially years longer than the lifespan of cheaper options. Choose comfort, quality, and texture over budget, and you may even find yourself finally sleeping seven to eight hours per night. 

Delight in the Details

Your ideal home may be one peppered with fresh flowers, abundantly awash in cozy blankets, flowing with subtle aromas, showcasing unique artwork, or personalized with unusually gorgeous mugs and plates. Whatever pops into your head when you’re visualizing your ideal home interior should be something you pursue, analyze, then dive into as soon as you feel sure. 

The Takeaway 

When it comes to making smaller, thoughtful upgrades within your home, no one else can tell you what’s right for you! This is a journey toward your ideal home, so the opinions of others are essentially inconsequential. 

We hope our list helps you dip your toe into the water of affordable upgrades. If you are still looking for your dream home, please contact your agent at your earliest convenience. There is no real estate firm whose agents are more plugged into the nuances, trends, and upcoming market shifts right here in Middle Tennessee.