Renovating your home is often a bit of a long game, and at times it can feel as though it will never come together. Rooms often look much worse, before they begin to look better and living on a building site is not fun for anyone. As time passes and your renovation begins to come together, you’ll start to see life coming back into your home, but even once the major renovations have finished, you may still find that something seems to be missing – those finishing touches. Finishing touches are the important details that can transform a renovation by adding personality back into your space – here are seven of our favorites.
Plants
Plants add vitality to any room, bringing your space to life and softening harsh corners and furnishings. Aside from looking fantastic, plants can also help to improve the air quality in your home and have been proven to reduce stress and increase productivity too. Large feature plants such as a Rubber Plant (Ficus elastica) with its broad green leaves, or a Fiddle Leaf fig (Ficus lyrata) make great architectural features, while smaller trailing plants such as a String of Hearts (Ceropegia linearis) or a Heartleaf Philodendron (Philodendron scandens) make great additions to shelving. For tabletops and windowsills, cacti, succulents and smaller pot plants can also help to add interest and texture. If you don’t consider yourself to be very green-fingered or don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to the upkeep of your indoor garden, then opt for low maintenance varieties or even artificial plants which can provide a similar effect.
Switches and sockets
Outdated switches and plug sockets can clash with modern interior design, dragging the whole look down and making it appear cheap and tacky. Simply replacing old white plastic sockets with new more individual ones can dramatically lift the finished look of your home, not to mention, many more modern sockets and switches come with great features such as dimmers, USB ports and toggle switches too. Coming in a variety of colours, textures, materials and styles, there are more switches and sockets out there than you may have ever thought possible and so it is worth spending some time looking at the selection to find the perfect ones for your home. Copper plated, brass, metal, tile, or custom painted, it’s time to make your switches and sockets a feature in your room and not just an afterthought,
Trinkets and decor
Trinkets and other items of home decor, help to inject personality and style back into your room. Bowls, jars, ornaments and vases, are able to act as decorative pieces in their own right but when placed correctly can also work together to provide a larger visual effect. Whatever look you are going for, there are thousands of different trinkets and home decor options available and it is easy to spend hours browsing the French Knot decor and homewares section.
Lamps, lampshades and fixtures
Lighting is an essential element of any home, and although large structural changes may have been made during the renovation itself, it is often the smaller changes such as the addition of lamps, new lampshades and modern fixtures that make the most difference. It’s important to consider how your room will look throughout the seasons and from day to night and to include lighting options that are functional on bright days as well as on those that are dull and dreary. Floor lamps and table lamps are perfect for providing spot-lighting over key areas such as a desk or a table and work well in isolation or when used as a part of the wider lighting set up. For an instant facelift try updating all of your light fittings and fixtures, opting for more architectural pieces wherever you need a decorative centrepiece and streamlining when you want to make a room feel bigger.
Rugs
Whether you’ve chosen to update your flooring during your renovation or not, rugs are a great way to soften the harshness of hard floors, to hide imperfections in older carpets and to create a feeling of softness and texture. Available in virtually any colour, material and style, rugs are an extremely versatile form of decoration that can be used in any room in the house, and when used in conjunction with other features such as trinkets, home decor and soft-furnishings can be an extremely effective way to transform your home. Why not inject a pop of colour into a monochrome room with a bright Persian inspired rug, or add softness and a Hygge feel to your living space with a sheepskin runner?
Candles and diffusers
Renovations often have a certain smell about them, whether it be the smell of plaster, fresh paint or cut wood, it certainly doesn’t make your house feel like home. It can take many months for a room to lose this freshly-renovated scent and to take on the smell of your house – which is where candles and diffusers come in. Whether you have a signature scent that you usually have around the house, or simply want to mask the smell of fresh paint with something new, candles and diffusers are a great way to give your nose something a little more pleasant to smell and acting as visual decorations too, you really can’t go wrong.
Radiators or radiator covers
Taking up wall-space in virtually every room, whether you’re modernizing or trying to create a certain classic-look, radiators can easily give you away. Switching to designer-style floor to ceiling radiators is an easy way to make a statement, but you can also quickly and cheaply update your radiators with a simple lick of paint, or by using a radiator cover which will also provide you with additional mantle space for trinkets and other home decor elements.
So there you have it – seven finishing touches that can transform your home after a renovation. They may be small on their own, but when combined with the rest of your renovation they can have a big overall effect on the outcome of your space. What finishing touches do you believe make a room? Let me know in the comments.
