Moving into a newly built house can be fantastic, as it is a completely blank canvas for you to work with, and you’re the first person ever living there! However, the positive of it being a blank canvas can also be a negative, because some people find it difficult to put their stamp on it and to really feel at home.
When you move into an older house, usually there are natural features of the property that bring character, which some people find are lacking in new builds. Yet, this doesn’t mean that you can’t make it happen. We’re here with 6 ways for you to make your newly built house feel like home! With some time and love, this can happen in no time, so let’s find out how.
Start With One Room At A Time
So, you’ve moved in, you’re unpacked, and it’s time to start working on your new home. It can feel tempting to try and sort everything at once, but often what happens is bits and pieces get done in each room, but nothing feels complete, whether you run out of time, money, energy or all three. So, we’d recommend that you focus on one room at a time, get everything finished in that space to a standard you’re really happy with, and then move on to the next.
This way, you can really start enjoying your home and those rooms, rather than feeling like everything is half done. Depending on how much time you have and the money to do what you want to do, we’d recommend maybe choosing one room a month and you’ll soon see that it can be transformative in no time! So, choose your colour palette and soft furnishings, get stylish storage, and decor, get everything in place, and then move on.
Get The Walls Decorated!
One of the major things that often results in new builds feeling like they don’t have much character is the plain walls. So, let’s change that! In each room, decide what you want to do depending on the space. This could be painting a feature wall, creating a gallery wall with different family photos and wall art prints, hanging mirrors and wallpaper, adding panelling, decorative moulding or even painting something to hang your own artwork!
No matter what it is that you decide on, this is something that can completely transform a room, plus you don’t have to spend a fortune at all. It could be as simple as printing off some of your favourite photos with friends and family, getting some second-hand frames from a charity shop and creating a lovely vintage-inspired wall display.
House Plants
Another way to quickly bring your house to life is with houseplants! They bring a stunning element of colour to the space and just make it feel really nice and bright; it can improve air quality and just help to improve air quality. You can watch them grow in your home and it can be really satisfying!
If you’re new to looking after houseplants, we’d recommend choosing ones that are quite low maintenance while you find your groove, like monstera, snake plants, peace lilies, rubber plants, jade plants or spider plants.
Focus On The Garden
Something that can really contribute to you not feeling settled in your new home is the garden situation. With a new build, often you will usually not get any soil or grass at all, so it can feel and look a bit like a building site outside.
Once you get this sorted and can look out onto a nice garden, it will really help. So, this is something you can do yourself if you want to save some money and are happy to start with something a bit more basic, then you can get soil delivered and then lay turf rolls on top. If you do decide to do it at home, you may need to consider something like dumper hire, as although it’s an expense, it’ll make your life much easier!
Improve The Lighting
Building homes can feel quite cold, so improving the lighting can help to warm up the space and help it feel nice and cosy. Usually, they’ll just come with one main light fitting in each room, so this is your chance to get creative.
Think about things like warm hanging lights over your kitchen table and lamps in your living spaces and bedroom; changing out white light bulbs for warmer yellow ones; getting LED lighting around your kitchen cupboards; and even small touches like candles. This can also help save money on energy bills.
Host Friends and Family
Last but not least, usually your house will start to feel more like a home when you share it with the people you love. Invite your loved ones over to celebrate your new home, and then you can start making special memories. If you’ve moved to a new area, why not try out some new hobbies to meet people, and then you could host a social.
You can do lots of practical things to make yourself feel more at home, which is important, but there’s nothing quite like sharing your home with the people that you love.
Final Thoughts
Making your home somewhere that you feel completely comfortable and at home can take time; however, we would say to ensure that you focus on one room at a time, get the walls decorated, get your garden up to scratch, create a warm atmosphere with lighting and start to enjoy the space with your friends and family
