Quick and Easy Projects That Make a House Feel Like a Home

You can make your rooms look taller, larger, and more modern if you paint the baseboards and moulding the same color as the walls. To create visual depth between the areas, use a higher gloss finish on the trim than on the wall. Use a flat or eggshell paint on the wall, and satin or semigloss for the trim. 

If painting trim to match the walls isn’t your thing, make contrasting trim look more modern by painting it a color instead of white. Try pewter trim with gray walls, light tan trim with white walls, or earthy green trim with beige walls. Painting the trim transforms the look of a room with one gallon of paint.

Painting cabinets is an easy way to change the look of a room. Painting a bathroom vanity is a lot easier than painting kitchen cabinets, because you can do it in less than a day. Choose a color that’s pulled from the tile or wallpaper or pick a color that contrasts them. Some popular colors for vanities right now are gray, sage green, black and navy blue. This works best if your vanity is made of solid wood. Paint doesn’t adhere as well to composites like medium-density fiberboard (MDF).

Chandeliers are the divas of light fixtures. Swap a ceiling fan or flush mount light for a chandelier and you get instant, dramatic change. Hang a chandelier in a bedroom, over a kitchen island, or in a dining room. They create a focal point in a room and announce that you’ve made the space your own. It’s easy to find a chandelier to fit your style, whether it’s farmhouse, mid-century modern or bohemian.

The kitchen is the busiest room in the house, so adding new lighting here makes a noticeable change. Swap out the pendant light over your island for linear island lights, the latest thing in kitchen lighting. This fixture hangs like a pendant but has multiple lights connected to one another. It’s like a rectangular chandelier.

We’re used to seeing sconces in bathrooms and bedrooms, but putting them in the kitchen adds a useful layer of task lighting. Place swing-arm sconces over a kitchen sink, wine rack or coffee bar. Try a style with a swing arm to better focus a beam downwards on a sink or prep area.

Don’t be afraid to mix styles and materials in a single room. Your cabinet hardware doesn’t have to match, and it’s better if it doesn’t. Try using glass knobs alongside metal drawer pulls, or ceramic knobs with metal pulls.

Lowe’s stocks cabinet pulls shaped like cow skulls, palm trees and golden retrievers, among other things. Put a giraffe pull on the vanity in your children’s bathroom or bee-shaped knobs on your vanity. You want your house to look like your home, not a model home. Choosing whimsical cabinet hardware adds a small but powerful dash of creativity.

Roman shades are an elegant cross between shades and curtains. A rectangle of fabric sized to fit inside the window frame, they go up and down via a series of guide rings and lift strings sewn into the fabric. When closed, the fabric is flat. When open, the shade gathers into soft folds. Unlike many blinds that are bland by design, Roman shades come in a slew of colors, prints and fabrics that allow you to express yourself while keeping the neighbors from seeing into your house.

Sheer curtains look elegant and give a breezy, airy feel to the room. They’re minimal, with no fussy colors or gewgaws that keep your eye from moving around the room, so sheers make a space look larger. They also let in diffused natural light, which makes a room look larger and cheerier. Pair sheers with heavier drapes if you need to block light. But remember, dark rooms look and feel smaller. Most of us aren’t struggling with rooms that look too large.