Looking for some creative ways to put your own design stamp on a new build property? From introducing colour accents to faking period features, a few decorative flourishes is all it takes to make your new build house feel like a home made just for you.
How to personalise a new build home
A new build home is the perfect blank canvas on which to stamp your personality. With no dusty old carpets to rip up or grease-splattered kitchens to wipe clean, you can begin making your mark on the space as soon as you move in. Plus, you get the bonus of being the first person to ever live in the property – how amazing is that?
So, if you’re about to get the keys to your first new build home or you’re tempted by the energy-saving benefits of a new build, here’s some top tips for adding your own personal stamp to your home’s decoration.
Add a photo gallery
One of the quickest and easiest ways to make your home feel personal is by sprinkling your rooms with images of your friends and family. Hallway console tables, window ledges, and bedside tables are all perfect places to add a framed pic or two, but something else that looks really impactful is a photo gallery. Consider creating one along the length of your entry hall or even ascending up the stairs. That way you’ll get to see the images every day and visitors to your home will be able to enjoy them too.
Style-up some shelves
Shelves aren’t just handy for storage, they’re great for expressing your personality (or just keeping precious items at heights the kids can’t reach). You can find them in all sorts of styles, from rustic looking scaffold boards to freestanding shelving units. What you place on your shelves is up to you, but they’re a great accessory for displaying books and ornaments stylishly. For smaller spaces, we recommend using floating or wall-hung shelves, and placing these higher up to make the room feel larger.
Introduce colour accents
Most new build homes will be handed over neutrally decorated, so another way to immediately distinguish your home from the neighbours’ is by adding a lick of paint to your walls. Whether you want to approach each room in isolation or create a cohesive colour palette, you’ll find plenty of inspiration on online image sharing sites like Pinterest as well as by visiting DIY stores. Top tip: before you settle on a colour, try a swatch in the room and sit with it for a few days to see how it looks in different lights.
Go wild with wallpaper
From realistic looking bricks to foliage and geometric patterns, experimenting with wallpapers offers a fun way to project your personality into your home. You don’t have to paper a whole room from floor to ceiling. Just one accent wall is enough to create an interesting focal point that completely changes how the room looks and feels. Smaller rooms, like downstairs cloakrooms and toilets, are perfect for wallpapering as the impact is instant, as soon as you open the door. If you’re not ready to commit paste to paper, try hanging a length of wallpaper using poster hanging frames or even framing different sized swatches to create an arty accent wall.
Add a faux fireplace
A fake fireplace is a great way to introduce a focal point in entertaining spaces like living rooms and dining rooms. New build homes are rarely built with a flue, so adding an electric powered fireplace can give you the illusion of a real fire without the maintenance. From faux log burners with period-style surrounds to floating fireplaces in glass and steel, a fireplace can really help to bring a room together.
Get playful with panelling
Panelling is another feature that’s traditionally associated with character properties, so it’s the perfect way to inject a luxury look into your home. Many DIY stores and websites now offer ‘off-the-shelf’ panelling you can just fix to your walls, or you can easily create your own using dado or picture rails. Alternatively, opt for a panelled wallpaper. That way, if you change your mind later, you can easily paint over it.
Go bold with a statement rug
We’ve offered a lot of options for putting your stamp onto the walls of your home, but another focus area you can personalise with your own unique style is your floors. Rugs in statement prints and patterns not only help to make a room feel more stylish, they also provide a cost-effective way to zone rooms into different spaces. Top tip: if you’re adding a rug to a vinyl or laminate floor, be sure to add a non-slip backing so it doesn’t move when you walk over it.
Find out if you qualify for a new build home
If this article has inspired you to consider buying your own new build home, but you’re not sure if it’s within your budget, arrange an appointment to speak to one of our mortgage brokers. We can go through the finances with you to work out exactly how much you could afford – and with no obligation to proceed and no fee for our services, there’s nothing to lose.
So why wait around when your perfect home could be in the process of being built? We are New Build Specialists when it comes to mortgages, so contact us to see how much a lender would be prepared to loan you.
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