When trying to make changes at home that can make it feel like a fresh environment, you might be trying to strike a certain balance. Ideally, you want to make the change feel as significant as possible without incurring the kinds of costs that can often come with truly significant alterations. This might simply sound impossible, but it’s about perception and understanding the kind of influence that certain features of your home can have.

That being said, this isn’t just about fooling yourself into changing how you see your home – this is an opportunity to make real changes that can improve both the aesthetic and functionality of where you live.

The Floor You Walk On

In the list of priorities that you have about your home and the importance that each aspect holds, you might not think too highly of your floors. However, it might not be until you see what a difference in this regard does for your home that you understand why you should give them another look. This is a chance for you to change the material that you use in any given room – changing to or from a carpet, for example. It could also be that your hardwood floors have come under disrepair after years of use, which is something that you might not notice when you spend so much time in your own home. Looking into hardwood flooring repair, though, could completely improve the appearance of these areas without even changing anything about their design. 

While sometimes, as in those cases, it’ll be obvious as to what’s wrong with the floor, sometimes, it can seem to be in perfectly good condition while still contributing negatively to your enjoyment of a space. This might, as mentioned earlier, be like having carpet in an area like the bathroom, where a hardwood alternative might make more practical sense. There is a great deal of importance placed on the floor when tying a room together and understanding that might help you to make changes that can make for a happier home.

Avoiding Bare Walls

When you’re renting your current home, there is a certain temporary nature to it that might prevent you from getting as settled as you might do elsewhere. Perhaps you don’t buy as much furniture as you would if you intended to stay for longer, or maybe you let your walls go bare, devoid of decorations, because it feels unnecessary. Trying to categorize everything as being necessary or otherwise can quickly prevent you from doing a lot of things that make your life more comfortable, and you might be surprised at how much some personal decorations on the walls make to how happy you are in your home.

This could feel like an obligation at first – even something that you want to avoid due to the money that you’ll have to put down on decorations. However, it’s also an opportunity to get creative. This is a chance to add a personal flair to where you live, to reflect your own interests all around you. That’s not to say that everything you put on the wall has to be a work of art, but just applying colors and small decorations where you can might surround you with things that you enjoy. Underestimating how making your home a more comfortable space can benefit your mental health might be taking more of a toll on you than you think.

Mental Health Considerations

So, when exploring that question, what else can you do around your home to make it a space that supports your mental health? This is meant to be somewhere that you can retreat to in order to feel at peace, and if it’s not providing the reprieve that you would hope for, perhaps it’s time for some changes. A suggestion that you might see touted regularly is that of houseplants. Houseplants can be mentally beneficial in the way that they connect you more closely with nature, which might be something that goes especially appreciated if you live in a dense urban environment. 

Natural light can also be massively important, but that can be hard to add to unless you’re able to create windows in more areas of your home; otherwise, painting your walls lighter colors and installing mirrors could help you make the most of what’s available. Even just making areas like your living room or bedroom as comfortable and homely as possible can have you enjoying spending time there, whether it’s to meditate, read, relax, or do nothing at all.