Renovating your property can add a significant amount of value to the list price, as well as create a beautiful home decorated to your unique tastes.

The unfortunate downside to these benefits is the cost. Renovating your home can cost a lot of money, depending on the size of the project. This is before you factor in the inevitable rise in costs or hidden issues you didn’t include in your initial valuation.

Naturally, this can put a lot of people off from doing work in their homes, preferring to live in a house they are not entirely happy with.

You don’t have to let this be you.

In fact, while you should always overestimate how much your renovation project will cost, using a few simple tips and tricks, you can save some pennies and still add value to your home.

Here’s how you can renovate your house – without breaking the bank:

Flooring choice can make all the difference to space and your wallet

It is easy to overlook one of the most basic and powerful ways to transform the appearance of your home – the flooring. Ageing, moth-bitten carpet or dated tiles can suck the attractiveness out of your house, no matter how much you spend elsewhere.

There are a number of possible options, but quality wood flooring stands the test of time better than carpet and even tiles and, if you choose wisely, won’t break the bank.

While it might take time to learn how to lay wood flooring, it can instantly transform your space and act as a foundation for the remainder of your project.

Your choice of a home should be decided deliberately and carefully

Now, another major step to reducing the costs of your renovation project is to choose the donor house carefully in the first place. This does not apply to all projects – if you bought your house a long time ago (at a time when you had no intention of renovating it), this is not an option.

However, if you are in the market for a house to renovate and either live in or sell-off, then the choice of property will impact the overall cost of your project considerably.

This doesn’t just mean that smaller properties cost less money to renovate – this goes without saying – but certain properties are undervalued due to being in disrepair. However, on closer inspection, many of these properties don’t need a huge amount of serious work. Rather, they need a lick of paint, some walls knocked through, and some new appliances.

These are the ideal projects to aim for.

The properties to avoid at all costs are the large, ageing properties marked down to tempting prices. While it looks like you get a lot for your money, they are likely concealing broken roofs, cracked plumbing, and damp problems. These are all guaranteed money burners, and you are unlikely to get much cashback on the resale.

Tear down clutter and knock through rooms

When you need to renovate your house on a budget, you can’t go far wrong by getting rid of excess clutter and even knocking through walls to create a more spacious layout. You’d be amazed at how drastic the aesthetics of a room change once old furniture, radiators, and unnecessary walls are removed. There’s a good reason why many newbuilds are open-planned.

Change the windows and improve the lighting

Another way to renovate your home without breaking the bank is to replace the windows and improve the overall level of lighting in the rooms. Firstly, many attractive homes are let down by ageing, cheap-looking window frames, so if this is a concern, it’s worth the investment. After all, going through the trouble of renovating your home and spending a good deal of money without swapping out the unattractive windows would be a tremendous waste of your savings and put a ceiling on your house’s value.

Lighting is another great way to transform the size of your rooms. Using discrete up-lighters and creating larger windows will lift your interior space for a relatively small outlay.

Make existing features work harder

One easy way to give your home a defined aesthetic is to work with what you’ve already got. If your home has a grand Victorian fireplace, for example, but you desperately want to renovate the house into a more modern aesthetic, you could keep the fireplace as a style statement. You could even paint it a vibrant colour and fully embrace the house’s character.