Renovating a home sounds exciting—until you’re ankle-deep in drywall dust, second-guessing your paint choices, and wondering why every fixture you like is backordered. I’ve been there. We tackled a full interior renovation a few years ago, and let me tell you: it was both the most exhausting and rewarding project I’ve ever taken on.
If you’re planning to renovate and redesign your home’s interior, here are some hard-earned lessons, design tips, and honest mistakes I made that could save you time, money, and maybe a few headaches.
1. Don’t Design Before You Declutter
Seriously—before you even start sketching layouts or pinning ideas on Pinterest, you need to clear the space. I thought I could work around the chaos, but nope. Clutter fogs your vision.
📦 Donate, toss, or store anything that’s not essential.
📐 Take actual measurements of your rooms once they’re cleared.
Once we got the junk out, I saw our house with fresh eyes. Suddenly, I could see where walls could come down, how light would flow, and how we could open things up without adding square footage.
2. Every Room Needs a Purpose
It’s tempting to go for trendy design, but your home needs to function first. For example, I turned our formal dining room into a cozy library/office nook. We rarely hosted big dinners, but we desperately needed work-from-home space.
🛋 Before you design a room, ask: How will we use this space daily?
🛏 Be realistic—don’t design for imaginary scenarios.
The biggest shift came when I started designing around how we live, not how I thought the house “should” look.
3. Lighting Changes Everything
We had a dark, cave-like hallway that felt like a tunnel no matter what we did. Swapping out the overhead fixture helped a bit, but the real game-changer? Adding recessed lighting and a solar tube. Boom—instant brightness.
💡 Layer your lighting: overhead, task, and accent.
🪞 Add mirrors to bounce light around darker rooms.
🌞 If you can, enlarge windows or add transoms for natural light.
Natural light is free and makes even the cheapest renovation look upscale. Trust me.
4. Open Concept Isn’t Always the Answer
I know everyone’s obsessed with open floor plans, but removing walls isn’t always the best move. We opened our kitchen to the living room—and suddenly, all the noise and mess from cooking spilled into our chill zone.
🧱 Instead of demo-ing everything, consider partial walls, half-height dividers, or large cased openings.
🔊 Use rugs, lighting, and ceiling treatments to define zones without sacrificing flow.
Sometimes a little separation gives your home more structure and sanity.
5. Invest in the Stuff You Touch Every Day
This might sound silly, but splurging on high-quality door handles, faucets, and light switches made the biggest difference. You touch those things all day long, and cheap ones wear out fast.
🚪 Solid-core doors, matte black hardware, soft-close drawers—all worth it.
🚿 Go mid-range on decor, high-end on functionality.
We went budget on our kitchen backsplash and high-end on our faucet. No regrets.
6. Stick to a Cohesive Style, But Don’t Get Boring
I made the mistake of buying furniture and finishes from too many different styles at first. It felt disjointed. Once I narrowed our design style (we landed somewhere between modern farmhouse and warm minimalist), everything started to click.
🎨 Choose 2-3 core materials/colors for the whole house.
🪵 Mix textures (wood, metal, soft fabrics) to avoid flatness.
🖼 Accent pieces are where you can have fun—art, pillows, rugs.
You want each room to feel unique, but still like it belongs to the same house.
7. Budget for the Unexpected (and Then Some)
I wish someone had told me to pad our renovation budget by at least 20%. Between electrical surprises, flooring issues, and custom cabinet delays, we went over—by a lot.
💰 Always assume something will go wrong.
📋 Keep a “must-have” vs. “nice-to-have” list.
We had to skip a built-in wine fridge to cover unexpected plumbing repairs. Was I sad? Yeah. But now we don’t have leaky pipes, so it balances out.
8. Don’t Rush the Process
I know how exciting it is to want everything done yesterday. But good interior design takes time—especially during a renovation. I rushed into painting the living room before testing samples. It looked great in the can, but on the wall? Ugh. Too cool-toned. Had to repaint.
🖌 Live in your space for a bit before making permanent choices.
📦 Sample paint, flooring, and materials in natural and artificial light.
Waiting a few extra days saved me from years of regret in the bedrooms.
Final Thoughts: Make It Yours
At the end of the day, your renovation interior design should reflect you. Not some influencer’s feed. Not a showroom. It should feel like home when you walk in—comfortable, functional, and full of little details that make you smile.
If I had to do it all again (and honestly, I probably will someday), I’d go in with a plan, a mood board, a realistic budget, and a little more patience.
And maybe I’d finally pick the right shade of white paint the first time. (But who am I kidding? That’s probably impossible.)
