How to Brighten up the Interior Areas of Your Home

If your home environment is looking a bit dreary, you have many options for how to brighten up the interior space. Consider the following 5 ideas for transforming dull spaces to make them look brighter and more inviting.

Use Bright Daylight Bulbs

Your choice of interior lighting is one of the most obvious contributing factors to each room’s perceived levels of brightness. To make a room appear brighter, one of the first things you could consider doing is changing out your light bulbs. This will be particularly effective if your space has fluorescent lighting. You’ll also want to evaluate whether it would be productive to simply add a few extra lights to the space. If you only have one overhead light illuminating the area, you might want to add a few floor lamps or wall sconces to the décor.

Hang Light-Colored Curtains

If your windows are being obscured by heavy, dark-colored draperies, exchange those drapes for sheers or lighter-colored curtains. If applicable, roll up the shades and open the blinds.

Use Interior Painting to Your Advantage

The interior paint colors you choose influence your perception of the room’s relative brightness. If you need to make the room appear lighter or brighter, it’s beneficial to choose a correspondingly bright white interior paint color. It’s ideal if you can work with either an interior designer or an interior painting contractor who offers paint color consultations. Doing so assures that you get an experienced opinion on whether your chosen paint colors will be workable for that particular space.

Install Light-Colored Flooring

If your goal is to make your home look its brightest, it’s best to avoid decorating with dark colors on the floor. Light-colored flooring can help to create the perception that a space is bright and livable. It’s easy to add some light-colored area rugs to your living space. It’s a bit more complex to rip out your existing floor and reinstall it. However, if you’re planning a home remodel, you might decide it’s worth the effort to go ahead and install light-colored flooring. If you have hardwood flooring, it may be possible to remove your existing stain and refinish the floor with a lighter and brighter stain color.

Add Windows or Skylights

It may be possible to remodel your home to add windows or skylights. This could add significant amounts of natural light, which would brighten the interior considerably. If remodeling is not an option, you can at least clean your windows. If the glass on your windows is dirty, taking this action could possibly help to brighten the space.

These are some of the best options for making your interior space look lighter, brighter and more inviting. If you are dissatisfied with the level of brightness in your current design scheme, consider implementing any of the above ideas to improve the brightness levels.

Downsizing Checklist: Steps To Staying Organized While Moving

The idea of downsizing can seem like a stressful process at first. Well, you’re in luck because we created a step-by-step guide to help you through the process. 

We have the best tips and tricks to make your move as easy as possible. Our guide even includes a downsizing checklist to help you stay organized along the way.

Downsizing Benefits

Downsizing is increasing in popularity and with good reason. Here are some of the many benefits of downsizing your home.

• Reduced cost: Downsizing allows you to spend more money on hobbies that you love instead of spending it on higher bills and mortgage payments.

• Less environmental impact: Downsizing allows you to start using less gas, electricity and water than you did in your larger home.

• Reduce clutter: Downsizing will force you to declutter and simplify your life for a more stress-free living situation.

Now that you know the benefits, it’s time to go over our best tips for keeping you organized during your downsize.

Start months in advance

Allow yourself to take breaks and avoid feeling rushed throughout the move by starting months in advance. This will give you more time to debate which items you want to keep, so you have ample time to decide which items you want to donate.

Go digital

If you have physical photos and home movies of your family and friends, a trick is to convert home movies and photographs into digital files. Going digital will help preserve your precious memories while freeing up extra storage space.

Put Items in Categories

Put your items into different piles labeled: keep, storage, and donate. Everything in the keep pile can come to your new home. The items in the donate pile can be donated to the charity of your choice. Lastly, add any items in storage to your storage unit, garage, or attic.

Maximize your storage spaces

Before you go to grab your wallet to purchase a storage unit, it’s a good idea to consider alternatives in your own home for your excess items. Some suggestions are to use floating shelves, pick out multifunctional furniture and add built-in closet organizers.

Donate duplicate items

One of the easiest ways to free up more storage space is to get rid of duplicate items. Get rid of similar clothing items, kitchenware, and decorative items to make more room for your favorite items in your new home.

Moving Resources

• Downsizing Checklist: Use this checklist to stay on track during your move.

• Moving Labels: Use these labels to decide what items to keep or donate.

• Closet Organization Tags: Use these tags to organize your closet.

Downsizing can seem overwhelming at first, but staying organized will help you get through the process with ease. Luckily, companies like ApartmentGuide are a great resource for finding the ideal space for your living situation.

Factors to Consider for Your Home Extension Project

We partnered with a home improvement company for this post. The opinions in the post are honest. All reviews and opinions expressed in this post are based on our personal views. We are excited because we know you will love it.

Expanding your home’s footprint can be an excellent investment, but that type of project is more complicated than most people realize. There are a few important factors that you will need to consider well before you break ground or use a company like Ajay Demolitions on your home extension project.

Permits

While it might be tempting to save a little bit of money by forgoing building permits, that is going to be a big mistake in the long run. If you ever try to sell your home and you don’t have the proper permits for your extension project, then you could face huge fines and fees. As a general rule, you should assume that you are going to need new permits whenever any work is done to your electrical system, sewage lines, roof, or walls.

HOA Regulations

Those who live in a home that is regulated by an HOA should check their local bylaws as well. Some homeowners don’t know that an HOA can take legal action if a resident of the community doesn’t follow all of their bylaws. When you add anything to the outside of your home, it will most likely need to adhere to very strict rules. The HOA might even need to inspect and approve your construction plans before any work is done, and failing to have those papers inspected could result in a fine or lien against your home.

Additional Utility Lines

A minor home addition might not have a big impact on your utilities, but larger extensions could require new lines, pipes, or breakers. When most homes are built, the construction and utility companies rarely take future additions into consideration when they are developing the sewage system, breaker box, and electrical wires. If you need to run additional utility lines to your new home extension, then you should plan for additional expenses.

Potential Contaminants

Whenever work is done to older walls or roofs, homeowners should consider the fact that airborne contaminants might be released. Those who live in a home that is more than a decade old need to contact a company that will be able to detect those contaminants and remove them if necessary. Asbestos is particularly common, and the safest way to get rid of that toxin is to contact a reputable asbestos removal company.

Adding new rooms to your home is an exciting process that could improve your quality of life and boost your home’s value. That is why it is so important to ensure that you take your time and work with experienced contractors.

Tips and Tools That Can Make Your Routine Home Maintenance Tasks Easier

The work never seems to be done around the house. As soon as you finish taking care of one part of the house, there is always something else that needs to be fixed or cleaned. Fortunately, there are a few tools and tricks that you can use to free up more time to do what you like.

Get a Riding Lawnmower

Mowing the lawn is not only time-consuming, but it's also tiresome. Make the job a lot more fun with a riding lawnmower. It's like having your very own mini tractor. It will help you mow and mulch your lawn, and you can also get a trailer or dump cart to pull behind it. This can help you mow your lawn in record time while also relieving you of having to haul bags of grass clippings and leaves around your property.

Install a Sprinkler System

Rather than spending the day moving a sprinkler around your yard, you can install an automatic sprinkler system to do it for you. Simply set the timer, and your yard and garden will be watered without you needing to lift a finger. You can even set it for late at night or early in the morning while you're sleeping. Your lawn will never turn brown again because you didn't have the time to water it. Before you know it, your yard will be the envy of the neighborhood.

Put in Gutter Guards

Cleaning out the gutters is a necessary task most often done in spring and fall. This helps protect your roof and your home’s foundation from water damage and associated problems. However, installing a gutter guard, such as a Gator Gutter Guard, on your rain gutters can help prevent leaves from falling into your gutters and clogging them, which means you can save time cleaning the gutters. You'll no longer need to get your hands dirty digging rotting leaves out of your gutters. Rather, you can simply sweep them off of the top of the gutter guards and call it a day.

Set Up Shoe Trays

Adopting the Asian custom of removing your shoes before you enter the house is quite practical. Doing so can prevent friends and family from tracking dirt onto the carpet when they visit. Place a shoe tray by your front door as a signal that guests should remove their shoes. Also make sure that you have a stout and sturdy doormat to get the grime off the bottom of shoes. Keeping dirt off the floors in the first place will save time and energy in vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, and carpet cleaning.

Lay Down Drip Pans

Likewise, placing drip pans under where you park your car in the garage will keep the floor clean. Rather than scrubbing grease-stained cement, the grease in the pan can be drained back into a bottle for proper disposal. Most auto parts stores can accept used oil for recycling. This way, you're keeping the environment cleaner as well as your garage. This can also help you spot car problems early on.

These are just a few ideas to lighten the load and make life easier around your home. With a few simple preventative steps, you can reduce the amount of time you spend cleaning and maintaining your home.