Don’t forget the practical things when you embark on a home renovation. There is so much to consider when planning a refurbishment that it can be easy to focus on the aesthetics and forget the less glamorous elements. Here are seven boring but critical things to remember when planning a home renovation.
Bootroom and utility room
Things like coat storage, laundry room, and linen cupboards for storing towels and sheets – all sound pretty mundane, but without adequate planning in these areas, your beautifully designed home will soon look pretty chaotic.
Plan your utility or laundry room to make it as efficient as possible, regardless of the space. Consider raising your washer and dryer, so you don’t have to stoop when using them. By doing so, you will gain space below. This free space is ideal for locating pull-out drawers for laundry baskets.
Plan for the future
Try to plan for the future and not just now. It can be easy to design your home to work for small children, for example. But pretty quickly, you will find yourself with a house full of teenagers and your open plan layout might not work.
Smart heating controls
If you are changing your heating system, opt for an intelligent system like Nest. A smart system like this will enable you to control your heating from your mobile phone. These intelligent systems adapt and react based on how you use them. In other words, they get to know how warm or cold you like your house to be and adjust accordingly.
Wall space
Make sure you leave yourself some wall space. This might sound like strange advice, but with open-plan layouts, you can quickly run out of walls to hang art, photos, or put furniture up against. In your home renovation plan, try to resist the temptation to put a window on every external wall. Plan your views carefully and avoid windows onto side passages.
Natural ventilation
For living spaces with large glazing expanses, try to incorporate a window for ventilation. There will be times when you will need to open a window and opening a large sliding door won’t be practical.
Furniture layouts
Plan where all of your furniture will go before you plan your radiator, socket and lighting layouts. Think carefully about where you might need to put lamps, where your sofa will go etc. By planning your layouts with electrics and other fixed elements in mind, you’ll avoid furniture being pushed up against radiators and having sockets in the wrong locations.
Using a tool like our Home Renovation Planner can be helpful for sketching out furniture layouts and keeping track of any critical information.
Storage
Storage is another practicality that you can never have enough of. But think carefully about your storage requirements and let what you need to store dictate the kind of storage you select.
Designated storage is far more efficient and useful than general store cupboards where everything gets thrown into, and it is impossible to find anything.
Look for under-used spaces in your home that could be utilised as storage space. Under the stairs is a great example and is usually just a general storage cupboard filled and difficult to access. However, many great solutions allow you to subdivide the space into drawers and cupboards to maximise this forgotten part of the house.
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