5 Things That Make Your Home Look Dated and How to Fix Them!

Time flies and before we know it our home can have outdated features that scream renovation. These are 5 things that may be making your home look dated!

Clutter 

We all have it, well most of us have it and it instantly makes our homes look dated.  When every corner and every shelf is full of ‘stuff’ you know you have too much.  Clutter doesn’t give the refreshed look and make it look like you’ve lived there for years and years and years.

The solution  - purge. Purge and keep purging.  If you can’t bare to part with your treasures, at the VERY least, come up with cupboards or shelves that have doors on them so you can’t see the clutter, or designate some storage areas like the crawl space or garage. Even better, it’s time to recycle or donate  these items.

Paint color

Paint color can definitely date your home. If you have a super saturation of color and bright bold colors in every room, this is tough on the eye and makes your home look dated.  Opt for more neutral tones or even bright white and leave the color to furniture and pillows.  If you’re in love with bright colors perhaps opt for a moody dark color on an accent wall combined with a nice bright white on the remaining walls.This brings attention to the wall but still keeps it modern and oh so easy on the eyes. Benjamin Moore’s color of the year is October Mist, a gently shaded sage.

Old furniture

The one furniture piece that is keeping your house in the past is that GIANT media unit. You know the one two towers on the side and a piece across the top, yep that one. This is definitely dating your home and more often than not taking up too much space as well.  There was a time when all these drawers and shelves were needed, but that time has passed, we are no longer in the days of VHS tapes and VCRs. If you have a piece like this but can’t bear to part with it, consider taking off the two sides and the top piece and perhaps painting the rest of the honey oak finish a more modern white or even that moody dark I mentioned above. This is sure to refresh and update your space.

Flooring 

If you have tile flooring with the old 90’s nice and thick, dark, dirty off colored grout, this could be telling people you’re stuck in the past. What is screaming ‘I’m from the past” here is the off colored thick grout. Now we all know how much work it is to remove ceramic but thankfully there are some other options. The easiest and most affordable option is to buy a grout pen and find a grout color that closely matches your tile color. This is going to reduce the contrast in color between the grout and tile and will make the width of the grout seem less of a statement.  Another option is to paint the entire floor and grout. If time and money permit, you can always put vinal plank flooring right over your ceramic tile. This is a much faster and cleaner alternative to taking out the ceramic tile and of course will end up in a much more modern look.

Honey oak wood staircase and spindles  

This is definitely dating your house and is likely the first thing you see when you walk in the door.  This can be a very affordable and easy fix.  Refinish the spindles in white paint and the handrailing in a dark, sometimes black finish and tada – you’re instantly put into this decade.  If the budget permits, you can replace the wooden spindles with more modern metal ones.  Either way, your staircase will now be a modern day eye catcher.