Are you renovating a home? There are sooooo many decisions to be made and it’s most helpful to know what needs to be considered first. So here are 10 critical decisions to consider along with many indispensable tips for planning your renovation.
10 Critical Decisions for a Timeless Home Renovation
Many people begin planning their renovation thinking, “I’ve got this!” But then when it comes down to the wire and your contractor is hounding you for colour decisions, that’s when you start losing sleep, worrying that you’ve made the right (or wrong) decision.
To help you out, we have a renovation design package in my edesign department. Hire me for a timeless and well-coordinated design plan for your renovation with all the right colours. I’ve worked with thousands of clients all over the world.
💻 If you’re reading this when it was published, there’s still time to jump into my free masterclass, “Trend-proof your home project in 2025.” It’s happening this Wednesday, February 5 at 9:00 am PST (12 noon EST). Sign up here.
And, if you have just finished a renovation and just found my website? Maybe, don’t read this post. It’s not fun when you realize you’ve made mistakes, as I’ve said in the past, ignorance is bliss. Read this post instead.
Just enjoy your new house and if all else fails and you really are cranky with the choices you’ve made, decorate to distract the eye!
The Order of Decisions when Renovating your Home
The order of decisions that need to be made when renovating is very important! Once you make a few key colour and design choices in the beginning, the conversation about what comes next is less about ‘What you love’ and more about ‘What will look good with what you’ve already chosen’ in addition to “What will work with the existing style of your home”.
And in renovations, you’re very often working around some element that you’re not planning to change. Often it’s a fireplace, or some flooring that runs through much of the space. Then you’ll need to consider that right away too.
Which brings us to your first decision.
1. | When introducing new HARD FINISHES; they need to coordinate with the style of your house, the end.
To be clear, DECORATING is very different. Fill your boots mixing traditional and modern but it mostly doesn’t work in the renovation stage.
For example, let’s say you live in a traditional home but you’re choosing modern finishes for everything. That’s not going to have a pretty outcome.
Or you bought a modern house but you installed a traditional, raised panel kitchen. Also, not a pretty or timeless renovation outcome.
2. | Timeless Flooring
My last home, pale maple (left) and my current home, medium brown (right)
Pale or medium brown wood or wood-look are your choices if you don’t have existing flooring to work with. You can buy my timeless wood flooring guide here.
If you have existing wood flooring there is a range of colours that can still be considered timeless. Older wood flooring running throughout your house is often worth keeping. Consider just updating the tile in the kitchen and move on to decorating and making your house a home. I go into this in much greater detail in my workshops.
Here’s when it’s a good idea to replace your floors
That said, if you have a small area of hardwood and miles of different tile and carpeting, your hardwood should probably go. That’s when you may want to consider maybe replacing ALL the flooring with the same LVP or engineered wood floor to create a more continuous look without those awkward transitions. It’s the mix of many different patterns and colours of floors that look dated and fragmented in your home.
An island of hardwood that is less than two-thirds of your square footage AND a dated colour is probably worth replacing with a more current flooring choice that’s continuous throughout. Read more about wood floor colour here.
Get my wood flooring guide here.
3. | Coordinating your Kitchen to the Fireplace
Even if you can’t see your fireplace from your kitchen, they should absolutely be related in design style and colour.
Imagine if I had not touched the fireplace I inherited (below right)? Not only were the rustic wood beams wrong with the style of my house but so is the modern grid moulding above the fireplace.
Happily, all my kitchen needed was new paint on the walls and island in addition to a new chandelier (left).
Instead I replaced the grid moulding with picture moulding that coordinated with the rest of the moulding in my home including the kitchen.
Next, we had the fireplace faux finished to match the Calacatta marble subway tile in my kitchen.
By the way, see my cute modern bentwood chair sitting beside the fireplace? You can like it or not but I can take it out anytime. Much harder to do if my fireplace insert was modern linear which would be very wrong in this house.
My kitchen cabinet paint colour did not need to be touched. It’s a lovely pale green beige that happens to be right on trend with the warm neutral kitchens and still has the original paint job from 14 years ago when this house was built. Miraculously there are no chips or dings on the painted cabinets at all.
All the paint colours in my home can be found in my True Colour Insider Community that also includes my Mood Board Course (3 modules with many downloads), along with my Exterior Masterclass (which is 19 modules) and will teach you everything you need to know about choosing the right paint colour for your exterior. You can learn more here.
4. | Yesterday and Today
Renovations are much trickier than new builds (that’s why they cost more in my eDesign department). You have to skillfully coordinate the old with the new so that you don’t end up with a look like this:
Old floors vs. new floors
Old Tuscan faux-finish gold walls, old traditional vanity, new black tub and new black modern floors.
Or the new white countertops and grey paint in an old earthy kitchen from the Tuscan trend!
The list goes on and on however the rule of thumb with renovations is: When combining old and new, you want to end up with a space that looks like it was all installed AT THE SAME TIME.
Which is the perfect segue to number five.
5. | Your Floor Tile should look Married to your Countertop
And your countertop should look married to your floor tile.
Let’s start with this photo (above). The fact that the grey and white quartz tile in no way relates to the old travertine floors is the first clue that it’s the wrong choice.
Here was a kitchen a reader sent in years ago lamenting the former homeowners choices:
Here we have a look that announces “new trendy black countertops–old kitchen”.
If you’ve been following me for a long time you’ll know I’m really good at working with what you already have, my kitchen refresh package is perfect (for when you can’t or don’t need to rip everything out). See it here.
6. | Appliances
This is a big conversation in a kitchen renovation because they are expensive and often we just want to wait for them to die before we replace them. I think if you have an appliance that is not the focal point of the kitchen, wait for it to expire before replacing it.
And sadly, we don’t have to wait long. With their built-in obsolescence, many of them don’t even last a decade.
We still have the fridge from our last home (built in the 80’s) chugging away in our garage. In the past 12 years, we’ve purchased two refrigerators—one for our current home (which was only 4 years old) and another to replace the new one we bought when we renovated our kitchen 10 years ago.
Panelled appliances are best but they are the most expensive. If you have white appliances, I would choose anything but white for your cabinets. If you have black appliances your countertops should be black to avoid the black hole syndrome. Stainless is still the raining queen and the most versatile.
7. | Hardware
If you get to hardware and you have decision fatigue, this is my hottest tip. 🔥 Install KNOBS on everything instead of pulls on everything. And skip the black hardware. We are 8 years into the black and white trend and it’s mostly looking harsh, flat and predictable everywhere you look.
This tip works in both kitchens and bathrooms.
Interior Design by Sarah Richardson
Interior design by Maria Killam | See the full bath here
8. | Paint Colours
It’s always easiest if you choose all your hard finishes and furnishings first and then choose the paint colours. However if you do need to paint first, I teach exactly how to make the right choices in my live workshops.
The reason why my bathroom isn’t all one neutral (see Step 10 below) is because I already had the art and ottoman that was going in this room.
Therefore, the more choices you’ve made in advance ,the more custom your house will look. This works the same for the outside. Imagine if you chose the paint colours before the stone or brick? That would make looking for those items very difficult.
And the opposite of that is, the more choices you make on a need-to-know-right-now basis according to your contractor or painters demands, the more generic and neutral everything has to be.
My entire house from top to bottom inside and outside was varying tones of one shade of taupe for exactly this reason.
So, if you want to install a timeless kitchen with a warm neutral like mine (below)? And you are waffling on the countertop decision? (which by the way, should be your first decision) I can help! I’ve curated the best warm modern neutrals with my new Collaboration with Samplize, get the collection of seven here. It’s all the neutral paint colours you need to get this look, I promise.
If you have a lot of paint colour choices to make, you’ll need my collection of 50 neutrals and whites that work every time. Buy them here.
Maria’s kitchen AFTER
9. | Lighting
Planning IN ADVANCE to add wall sconces in a bathroom instead of overhead bar lighting looks the best. To be clear, bar lighting has come a long way but here’s how to get your lighting right in bathrooms.
You do this with a plan. The reason why bar lighting is mostly what you see in bathrooms everywhere is because it doesn’t require any advance planning.
Your contractor simply takes a guess at how big the mirror will be, and installs the box for the light fixture.
Most sconce lighting is installed incorrectly. The sconce light is always either too high or too low. This is how it should be done (below).
Maria’s Primary Bathroom | Double Sconce | Similar linked here and here
I really love the chandelier above my tub. I wanted one in the bathroom in my last home but my ceilings weren’t high enough.
Lighting is not easy to choose but when you get it right, it will fill you with joy every time you walk in the room.
My biggest lighting tip is stay away from lighting with clear glass shades or a bare bulb. There are so many of them that are super sexy and look really good but why have lighting in your house that make your eyes squint.
Also, recessed lighting should live primarily in kitchens. And perhaps a recessed light above your shower (that’s what I have), but that’s it. As I have said many times, most really good designers avoid cheese lights and instead choose attractive surface mount lighting.
The reason homes everywhere are filled with holes in the ceilings is because walking the site with the electrician pointing to the ceiling eliminates the need to choose a pretty light fixture.
Why?
Because choosing lighting is hard and takes years of experience to do well.
For example, one client came to me with an inspiration photo for her yoga studio. The space was large so she needed a lot of lights but she wanted it to be soft here’s what I came up with:
So much better than a ceiling full of glaring light fixtures!
10. | Decorating & Styling
Did you know that 10% of any home project budget should be set aside for furniture, area rugs, art and lamps?
Any room that is now brand new will look bad with your old furniture sitting in it. Trust.
I always say that if you choose a sofa in your favourite colour, you will be happy to decorate around it again and again. You’ll also have a custom colour you can repeat throughout you home. Here’s a beautiful designer living room for inspiration (below).
I highly recommend you get busy gathering some inspiration for decorating! That’s the real destination. You’re mostly planning your canvas at the building phase.
This is also why the entire two days of my Create your Dream Home workshop is filled with advice on how to spread your money around.
You’ll get insider money-saving tips like, “Did you know you can install a shower surround that mimics the look of subway tile but is much more affordable?”
These insider tips are just a glimpse of the hundreds of designer secrets you’ll learn to help create your dream home – without the expensive mistakes most homeowners make.
Get my help with your renovation here.
PS. Trend-proof your home project in 2025. Sign up here for my free webinar on Wednesday, February 5 at 9:00 am PST (12 noon EST).
Related posts:
3 Simple Kitchen Upgrades; No Renovation Needed
The Linear Fireplace Does NOT Belong in your House
Are Hardwood Floors Considered a Pattern?
