House

Wisconsin-based interior designer Emily Winters of Peabody’s Interiors was tasked with an all-too-classic mission: An outdated kitchen from the late 1990s to early 2000s was in need of a modern makeover — and a much more functional layout.“It was a sea of natural maple cabinetry with sponge-painted walls and Corian countertops,” Winters says of the original kitchen.

For a lot of people, the kitchen is where a lot of time is spent. Everything from cooking to entertaining to hanging out with family happens in this space. So it’s a win if it represents the people who live in the home.Gina Gutierrez, interior designer and founder of Gina Rachelle Design, had a client who wanted her home “to reflect her taste while supporting working from home, cooking, entertaining, and life with her small dog,” Gina shares.

Kitchens are the highest-traffic areas in any home, serving as a place to work, cook, eat, and gather. The renovation inspiration for kitchens is endless, and sometimes it’s hard to decide where to start.If your kitchen isn’t in need of a complete overhaul, but still doesn’t fit your style, simply painting the cabinets or replacing the floors can make a huge difference.

Here’s the truth: Neutrals are nice, but they can also be a little… boring. That goes double when a room is filled to the brim with them, like this beige-on-beige living room from designer Natalie Papier’s own home.Natalie, of Home EC., is all about colorful, eclectic interiors — the exact opposite of the space she found when she and her family bought their new home in North Carolina after moving from Chicago.

Sometimes, outdoor space ends up being wasted space for much longer than planned. After years of a mostly unusable backyard, Jen Rothbury of @cracktheshutters wanted to create an outdoor space that her family could enjoy year-round.For her, that meant getting rid of an old trampoline and getting a hot tub instead. “The hot tub means that we can make the most of our garden even when it’s cold,” Jen says.

If you ever have the lingering feeling that your space looks good, but not great, turn your attention to the walls. Often, they just need a bit more oomph.Giving the walls a dose of texture with moulding or coating them with rich, moody paint color is a surefire way to make an entire space look more sophisticated and meant-to-be.This dining room is a great example.

Some home design trends are destined to become classics that never go out of style (think: Shaker-style kitchen cabinets, hex floor tiles, and picture frame molding). But others are definitely more short-lived (remember spray foam decor?).The dark red wallpaper in this 1980s dining room definitely fell into the latter category. Homeowner Alexis Moore (@alexisnicolemakes) says the space hadn’t been updated since it was built, and the overall effect was drab.

Green is a great color to use in interior design because it’s so versatile. Muted sages make for calming sleep spaces, and bold or dark greens can create statement-making bookcases.Brandi Katherine Herrera (@alivelymanner) went with bright green in her Omaha cottage’s dining room makeover. But the space when she bought it had a “palette of gray and white builder-grade finishes.

For an interior designer, there’s nothing like having a blank slate to design and a client who puts their full faith in your process. Sandy Baisley and Natasia Smith, co-owners and principal designers of Re-Find, had found that exact dream scenario with Julie. “Our client was moving into this home with no previous items for a fresh start,” Sandy shares.

A crisp white color scheme can help rooms feel bigger and brighter—but in some spaces, that’s just not enough. The only upstairs bathroom in Alli Devlin’s home suffered from an always-cramped feeling, thanks to the tiny windows and poor layout.Another drag: The 1978 home had seen few updates over the years, and the bathroom was no exception.

Blank white spaces, given their expansiveness and endless potential, can be tricky to decorate — especially if it’s a long hallway. But luckily for plant enthusiast Paige Tailyn, she knew she wanted to create an experience for her hallway that would make guests “feel suddenly engulfed by their surroundings,” she says.

During Meredith Svoboda’s final walk-through of her Nashville home, she photographed the dining room, “dreaming of the life I could bring to this room,” she writes.She, her husband, and their three children moved into their new house this past April, and Meredith decided from the get-go that she’d have to make some changes.“The room was so dark and always had a yellow hue to it,” she writes.

A functional, well-designed bathroom just might be the most important room in a home. After all, everyone in a home uses it — especially if it’s in a high-traffic part of a house or apartment. Homeowner Kiley Cutler wanted to make her main-level bathroom look and feel like a put-together space for her husband, two kids, and guests, so she opted to give the yellow-toned space a much-needed makeover.

Guest rooms are traditionally used to host out-of-town visitors, but because friends and family typically stay for only short periods, it can feel like a waste of space when no one is there. Project Lead for Mira Jean Designs, Jessica Viator, had clients who wanted to make the most of their extra bedroom. “They were craving a space they enjoyed walking into and one that reflected their personalities and flowed better with the rest of the home,” Jessica explains.

Renovating a dated part of your home poses a difficult question: How do you strike the right balance between making some much-needed changes and preserving the original character of the room? As DIYer Ericka Gularte (@oakandmarsh) found, giving some elements of the room a modern makeover and redoing others entirely made a world of difference when it came to updating her kids’ 1991 standard-build bathroom.

Staying in your old childhood bedroom doesn’t usually mean stylish or luxurious accommodations. For most of us, it tends to be a hodgepodge of dated bedding and mismatched decor — and for Amilia James (@rosedoorhome), it was no different.So after redoing her sister’s bedroom at her parents’ house earlier this year, Amilia decided to tackle her own, which her parents had converted into a guest room.

Sure, there’s a lot to be said for minimalist decor—but there are places where blank walls just don’t work. One of those is a laundry room. When Ten V (Delish & Decor) and her family moved into their home, for instance, the laundry room was pretty much empty.“When we moved in, we just quickly got a wall organizer to hang all the cleaning tools and a cheap shelf for detergents and fabric softener for our laundry room,” Ten says.

Even rooms with tall ceilings and large windows can feel dark if the color palette isn’t lending itself to an airy vibe. Pamela Stewart’s kitchen looked “dated, dark, and dreary” — despite the 9-foot ceilings and amazing views of the Arizona landscape. While the walls were white, the floors, cabinets, and countertops were all shades of brown, which made the space feel darker than it actually was.

There’s something so special about a neighbor-to-neighbor bond. Neighbors are like a nearby safety net — watering each other’s plants, checking in when the power goes out, or shoveling each other’s walkways in winter. Or, for Holly Saulie-Rohman, giving her neighbor Jackie a ride whenever she needs one. “We support each other in all the neighborly ways,” Holly shares. But the neighbors’ bond goes beyond helping with admin tasks.

It’s easy to look at a room and design it as it was intended: a kitchen as a kitchen, a bathroom as a bathroom, an office as an office. It’s a lot gutsier to look at a room and envision something else entirely — but that’s a risk that can bring lots of rewards.Conor McFarland saw potential in the living room of this 1880s house to be something more.

Sometimes all a space needs is a few small tweaks to pull it out of a rut. Case in point? A beige (very beige) bathroom in Desola Balogun’s parents’ home, which was majorly transformed thanks to a few of his fresh new additions.Desola spent an extended stay and wanted to do something for them.

Even if you use every cleaning hack in the book, it’s hard to make laundry fun. That goes double when you’re surrounded by blah finishes. If you’re getting tired of staring at the walls of your own laundry room, take inspiration from Ela Bobak‘s gorgeous redo—pulled together from a space that was boring at best.After Ela and her husband purchased their home in 2019, they spent about five months renovating a bunch of rooms, including their laundry room.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: You don’t have to spend a fortune to make a huge impact. That’s especially true for bathrooms, which are easy spaces to transform on a budget (and on a deadline). Kelly von Weber had already given her guest bathroom a bit of color and charm a few years back, but as time went on, she realized her tastes had changed.

Bathrooms can sometimes be utilitarian, but they can also be welcoming and beautiful. The guest bathroom at Chelsea Scott’s home was anything but. “The ‘before’ of the bathroom was simply just plain,” Chelsea says. “The sink vanity was a dark brown, and the walls were painted with flat, darker beige paint that did not stand up to normal traffic in a bathroom.

A few things to love from the ’70s, design-wise? Macrame, rattan, funky patterns — even conversation pits. A few things that certainly aren’t missed from the decade? Orange-toned everything, fluorescent lighting, and bland laminate countertops.Unfortunately, Jenessa Weaver’s 1977 kitchen had several not-so-fun-or-funky ’70s details, and she was looking for a change. So she enlisted the help of her childhood best friend, Alysha, designer and owner of Camp Interiors.

There are some rooms that just feel extra dreamy — home libraries with wall-to-wall bookshelves and antique lamps, sunrooms with tall windows and lots of plants, or powder rooms that feel straight out of a hotel, perhaps.These are the kinds of rooms you pin to inspiration boards or add to a “someday” list. For interior designer Valerie Darden (@brextoncoleinteriors), it’s breakfast nooks that make a house feel extra fancy.

When my partner Ben’s sister Annie, her husband Joe, and their son Ollie recently moved back to the Midwest, we were all thrilled — not just because we’d get to see them more often, but also because they bought a house that was basically a blank canvas. The bones are great, but every room is waiting for some love. Naturally, I volunteered to kick things off with a dining room makeover (check out the YouTube video version here) to set the tone for the rest of their home.

“The space seemed to have received no love for decades,” Taylor Graves says of what would become her daughter’s nursery. Before Taylor and her husband moved in, it had been a college student’s guest room and was simply used for function — “and it looked like it,” Taylor notes. Multiple layers of paint covered multiple layers of wallpaper, but the room was filled with details that just needed proper attention.

Sometimes 1970s wood-paneled spaces are great, but other times they just look old rather than retro. In Katie and Philip Bowling’s home office, that was the case.“We loved the coziness of the small office room, but it was so dark with the old faux wood paneling,” homeowner Katie Bowling (@katiebowlinghome) says. “The carpet in the room was so worn down.

When my partner and I bought our 1928 Arts & Crafts bungalow home in Portland, Oregon, at the end of 2023, I knew the kitchen was going to be a project. The floors were painted black and chipping off in large flecks. The countertops were avocado green and streaked with rust stains. The walls were gloomy and gray, and made the whole room feel like a basement. And the appliances? Beyond saving.

While traveling, I always fall in love with the architecture and design style of the places I’m visiting — it’s impossible for me not to become inspired and take a part of it home with me. Lots of homeowners feel the same — like this family home in London, England, that got a major makeover inspired by their trip to Miami, or this Netherlands home inspired by the family’s time in Malaysia.

Paint plus pattern is a great formula for creating a striking transformation in a room, especially if you love color.It’s a formula Brandi Katherine Herrera (@alivelymanner) knows well, as she’s added paint, paneling, and pattern to several rooms in her cozy, colorful cottage originally built in 1918.In her dining room, for example, she added paneling and painted it bright green with a fun wallpaper to match.

Look closely at the cabinets in Christina Riley’s kitchen. See anything weird? Yep, those top ones are upside-down.“We thought maybe someone had just flipped the doors as a prank,” says Christina. “But when we removed the cabinet boxes on day two of living in the house, we realized they were installed completely upside down!”That was the weirdest part of their home’s kitchen, but it wasn’t the only thing they weren’t wild about.

When one room in a home gets a colorful redo, it’s hard to look at other neutral rooms and not think about making a change. After Jessie Estes (@jessiegirlhome) redid her daughter’s bedroom in a bright, colorful style, the nearby bathroom started to look a little lackluster.“There are only two words that can describe the before: plain Jane!” Jessie says.

A good indication that a room needs a redo is the realization that you’re not using it to its full potential. For example, Sushma Samonini (@house_on_the_way) can’t really say there was anything wrong with the previous iteration of her UK living room.“But we found we weren’t really using the room well, either, as it was a confused mix of living room, playroom, and dumping ground,” Sushma says.

Fixer-uppers need a lot of attention — especially over-100-year-old fixer-uppers. So no surprise that when Liz Elliot moved into hers, a Sears kit home in historic Charleston, she and her husband focused on making the essential parts of the house livable and didn’t pay a lot of mind to the guest bedroom.

Cramped quarters can make it hard to want to spend much time in a kitchen. And plenty of factors beyond actual square footage can contribute to that feeling — dark finishes, bulky cabinetry, and blocked windows, for starters.Van Tuyet (@percivalinbloom) had to deal with all three in her townhouse’s kitchen. “The kitchen and dining area felt closed in, which amplified how narrow our townhouse felt,” Van says.

The 1960s gave the world a lot of groovy stuff—think bean bag chairs, Sputnik light fixtures, and funky colors like avocado and mustard. But some of the decor looked a lot better back in the 1960s than it does today.Case in point: Anna Westbury’s dark wood kitchen, original to her 1968 home. Its dark wood cabinets felt imposing, and the clunky fan made the ceiling feel extra low. Anna had already replaced the old beige appliances (win!

Open-concept living rooms, dining rooms, and kitchens have dominated home construction since the ’90s. But when DIYer Molly Miller moved into her new build in 2018, her family actually wanted more separation between the home’s main living areas. Everything was “lumped together in one large space,” and it made it difficult to have a functional kitchen with the limited storage.

A lot of great things came out of the 1990s — and there are plenty of design trends making a comeback that we love to see. But some of the decade’s looks could use a refresher, like the super-brown kitchen in designer Sheryl Sanders’s home.After living in the home for only two months, she knew she needed to do something to modernize the cooking space.Since the old cabinet boxes were solid wood and in great condition, she decided she could get away with just replacing the doors.

Many of us find living room makeover ideas on social media. But Christina Beck and her husband Colin literally found a house on Instagram.“One of our followers knew his mom needed to sell the house she had spent time in growing up for her dad,” explains Christina, who owns the renovation company Vero Home in Cincinnati with Colin.“It hadn’t been updated in at least 35 years and had a lot of deferred maintenance.

Small kitchens certainly aren’t unusable. In fact, there are plenty of space-savvy kitchen finds that can make tiny studio or galley kitchens work successfully.But sometimes, a small kitchen begs for a total renovation, which was the case for Bri Williams and her husband, Denver, and their 200-square-foot kitchen.

Multipurpose rooms, because of the nature of what they are (essentially combining two separate spaces, with their own goals and needs, into one), can easily become overwhelming and a headache. For June Cruz, that room was her dual laundry room and mudroom. It had no storage or organization, which made it a dysfunctional area. “It was essentially a drop zone for our coats, shoes, and bags, as well as our weekly laundry,” June describes.

Searching for and purchasing a home isn’t a small task. Not only is this process a major life milestone, but it can also be a hefty financial commitment. Knowing this, it’s totally fair to want to find a space that checks all the boxes. But in some situations, sacrifices might be necessary. Like when Lauren Alexander bought her condominium in 2021. “The home had good bones — beautiful crown molding and a stunning view with lots of natural light,” Lauren shares.

Orange-y wooden cabinets from the ’90s and 2000s might have a bit of a dated look to them, but they can be worth keeping just for the sheer quality of the wood. Throw a little paint on them, and they’ll be perfectly on-trend today, when dark gray, navy, and deep green paint colors reign.

Brick fireplaces can be total stunners, but depending on the color, age, and condition of the brick, they can also feel like “a very dull sea of brown,” per Emily Hauffler of House and Hens. Fear not: There are affordable ways to make a boring brown fireplace stylish, as evidenced by these 10 redos — and an 11th in Emily’s home.

Although closets can be great for stashing coats, scarves, umbrellas, games, sports equipment, and more behind closed doors, recently designers and DIYers have proven that removing the doors can also be quite fruitful — that is, if you want to create an alcove-esque design feature without having to do much demo. (Check out this closet-turned-home office or this cute entryway bench for inspiration!

Adding texture and architectural detail to walls is a surefire way to make a home look custom and character-filled rather than builder-grade — especially in a bedroom.You can see what a huge difference it makes in designer Cerrissa Fitz’s (@piranhadesign) basement bedroom, which she took from “sterile” and “boxy,” as she wrote on Instagram, to an “old-world vibe.”Although Cerrissa is an interior designer, this was her first time dabbling in DIY.

“Every great design process starts with a conversation, and for this project, that conversation began with discussing their life,” founder of Rise Up Home and interior designer Kendra Joseph explains.Kendra asked her clients questions like “What does a Tuesday morning look like with two young kids?” and “Where does the chaos land, and where does the calm need to be?

“When [my husband and I] bought our first home, the bathroom was at the top of my list to transform,” Samantha Kivell, a DIYer and bespoke upholsterer, says. But DIY projects can sometimes be put on the back burner when schedules fill up, or other projects become top priority. However, once Samantha’s schedule cleared up, she finally had time to tackle the DIY transformation she had been eager to do.

When your life is already changing exponentially, and you’re taking on a brand new adventure, why not add one more task to your already very full plate?At least, that was Elisabeth Edelman’s thinking when she purchased her 1950s Cape Cod home. “I had just sold my PR firm, had a baby on my own, and was setting out to write a novel and get published,” Elisabeth shares.

Inspiration can strike from almost anywhere — and that includes your undergarments drawer. In the case of Vickiann Vachula’s primary bedroom redo, a pair of soft-colored underwear was a close shade to what she had envisioned and helped inspire the room’s eventual color palette. Vickiann is the creator of My Crappy House, a blog that documents gradual renovations and DIY projects of her home.

A favorite travel destination inspired many pieces of this personality-packed gallery wall.

It’s totally sophisticated and totally pink.