How to Give Your Old Home a Modern Look

Styles change and it’s understandable that you might want your home to change with them. If you’ve moved into an older property you could find that it looks a bit dated, in certain areas at least. Although you might want to retain some period features, in other ways you’ll want to modernise your home.

Ultimately, getting the balance between old and new will depend on your personal taste, but here are a few helpful tips to modernise a traditional property.

Renovate the outside

The exterior of your home is the first thing that visitors will see and therefore it has a serious impact on how they view it. If the outside of your home is looking a little past its best, then even a modern interior will struggle to overcome those first impressions.

Giving your outside walls a fresh coat of paint is one option and can give your home a colourful, new look. What’s more, redecorating the exterior won’t cost you a fortune. Other options include rendering, where a layer of plaster is used to cover the outer walls or cladding, where an external layer, such as stone, timber or vinyl, is applied.

As well as delivering a brand new aesthetic, renovating your home’s exterior could also result in greater insulation and improved energy efficiency, both of which can be particularly helpful with older homes.

Choose your materials wisely

When choosing to carry out any work on your home, certain materials look modern, while others don’t. The latter is fine if you are going for a traditional or classic look, but if you’re hoping to modernise your home it makes sense for you to select your building materials with this in mind.

Using glass, in particular, is a great way of achieving a modern vibe in your home and many new properties are embracing this aesthetic. For example, if you are building an extension or conservatory, consider incorporating lantern roofs into your design. Another option would be building a skylight into your roof to let in extra natural light into your home.

Although brick and timber are unlikely to go out of fashion any time soon, they don’t suggest modernity in quite the same way as glass.

A sleek interior

Refreshing your home’s interior is another fantastic way of injecting new life into an older property. There is a range of different styles to pick from that would ensure your home looks fresh and one of the most popular is minimalism. This style focuses on sleek, simplistic furniture and ornaments, paired down with their essential components. Remember to clear your home of clutter and resist the urge to fill empty space just for the sake of it.

On the other hand, you can adopt a modern style by embracing home ornaments from all over the world. Incorporating global artwork and furniture helps your home stand out from more traditional properties that focus on European and American motifs.

Changing the appearance and feel of a property can be a difficult task and it will certainly require some work, even if just a lick of paint. If you do feel like modernising your property, however, it’s certainly possible, so why not give your old home a new look today?