Move or Renovate

Homes with Souls

Move or Renovate? I am often approached by clients who want to move home, asking for a home makeover to help sell their home. Before I even begin to look at dressing their home for resale, I talk to them about their motives to move. The majority of people are moving for the following reasons:

Need more space
Flow is awkward
Expanding family
Poor layout
Building doesn't fit or suit their needs anymore
Lack of storage
Spending lots of time out of the home
Feel like they don't own the home, only renting
Home has lost its heart/appeal
Unidentifiable feeling of unhappiness in the property

Move or Makeover

The good news is that the majority of reasons to move can be removed with good design. So far, I have a success rate of 100%. Meaning every client I have consulted with when they are thinking moving, they stay put. From an environmental perspective this has several benefits, not to mention the cost savings.

Some clients come to me as a last resort before they sell and again once we've analysed and redesigned the entire interior space, they fall back in love with the home and are happy to not sell. Certainly in Ireland, the recession and construction crunch has forced more people to re-evaluate their property decisions and not be so quick to move on. To move or renovate, the answer is to renovate. The grass always looks greener, and bigger is not necessarily better, both corny but true.

It's all in the Mind

When I conduct an interior analysis, rather than just looking at the property and space, the majority of my time is spent with the clients, listening and guiding. Finding out who they are, what they need, the family dynamic, what their priorities are and their dreams, I can begin to piece together their reasons for moving.

To move or renovate? More often than not the reasons are emotional. It's not actually the building structure that drives them to move on. It's their associations with the home, past experiences and emotions. If these associations with the property are negative, they want to move as far away from their associations as possible. The crunch comes when they realise that even if they move, their associations come with them.

Homes with Souls

Designing with emotions is a delicate process, yet with the help of an objective view of the property and their situation, the results are heart-warming. My clients are not born with the knowledge of how to manipulate the space they live in to heighten their quality of life and accommodate their needs, year on year. They just know they are unhappy with their home and want something new.

To me as a holistic designer, the word new means to reinvent and repurpose. That's what I specialise in, moving away from the â€˜buy buy buy' mentality and reinvesting our time and money into what we already own. The feeling we get from giving our care and attention to our existing home is much more rewarding and satisfying than moving. Living in the same home for lengths of time, just like the generations before us did, creates a deeper sense of family and community. Passing on â€˜homes with souls' to our kin.

This human approach to interior design is something I would hate to give up, working with people through the fraught times from the beginning of a project right through to completion. Clients have a air of lightness, happiness and a re-found sense of home life. They fall back in love with the home.

Renovate Ideas

Extensions
Interior architecture: redesign entire floors looking at needs, space, access, room function, location and daylight
Repaint a new scheme, reupholster, renovate, reuse, repurpose, repair
Bringing the outside in; conservatory, windows, garden landscaping
Daylighting; reduce artificial light, increase natural day light in the home
Downsize large homes through interior layout
Clever storage solutions, reduce clutter, organise the home

Renovate Pros

Less money than moving to a bigger home
Reinvest into what you already have
Help the environment by supporting local businesses, using natural materials and reusing what you have
Less carbon emissions through moving, construction and the whole â€˜new home process'
When you move, the home tends to be bigger, more utilities and running costs
Keep your sense of community identity
Learn to love where you are, greater feeling of completeness and security
Create a home with a soul

As a holistic designer, I offer a range of services from consultations to full design services. Please contact me for a quotation for online or onsite services. No more tricky decisions to move or renovate, let a professional guide you towards a home with a soul.

The icing on the cake would be plotting the home blueprint using Classical Feng Shui. Learning which rooms support you, where the best locations are and how to manipulate the environment further.