18 Jan 2023

SOURCE: CPF Board

The new year is a time of new beginnings, be it for you or your home. While it is common to embrace the notion of ‘out with the old, in with the new’, new beginnings need not always mean expensive endeavours. Sometimes, the experience of a fresh start can simply come from refreshing what you currently have, such as giving a new look to what is already familiar. This can also include good habits to adopt when it comes to upkeeping your home.

Regardless of whether you are readying your mandarin oranges and red packets for Chinese New Year, or if you are just tired of how your home currently looks, why not indulge in a little home maintenance to ‘spring-clean’ your home?

Here are some tips to help you do just that:

Spruce up your home by reorganising furniture

Sometimes, a fresh perspective is better than having something new. While buying new furniture is often an easy way to make your home look fresh, you can achieve the same effect by reorganising your existing furniture. Here are some methods to consider:

The minimalist approach

With minimalism, less is more. Think having less cluttered spaces for increased comfort. In doing so, simplicity becomes part of its visual charm, where having fewer items in the space makes the room looks cleaner and more soothing.

The first step in trying out minimalism is identifying which items or furniture are essentials and which are not. Minimalism emphasises on displaying the bare minimum, so it is important to learn how to declutter. For instance, if an item or appliance has a function that can easily be fulfilled by another item you already own, then you do not need to keep both around. In our article on upkeeping your home, you can find more useful tips on decluttering your home should you need to do so!

Of course, you don’t need to throw out everything. Minimalism is not about having nothing! The idea is to create a space that feels spacious and clean, and having fewer items helps with that. For example, if you wish to make certain furniture items such as the sofa stand out in a living room, you should avoid having items with colours that clash too much against said furniture’s colour, as well as large items that might distract from the main focal item. More importantly, it also helps you decide how much to spend on decorations, which might help substantially with managing your savings.

Maximalism

If ‘less is more’ is not your thing, maybe something bigger would be ideal. Maximalism is, as its name suggests, the opposite of ‘minimalism’ in that it’s about ‘more is more’. However, maximalism is not about simply having more items.

While minimalism is about seeing the space as a whole, maximalism is the sum of its parts. Maximalism lets the features of individual items stand out and be eye-catching in their own right. To achieve this effect, items with similar colour schemes should not be placed too close to each other, lest it becomes difficult to tell them apart. If possible, having items of contrasting colours will help to make them stand out more and add to their respective appeal.

In addition, height differences also help to create a stronger maximalist feel. In order to further differentiate items, you can place objects of different sizes and/or heights next to each other to create a noticeable difference between them. For objects of similar sizes, having different heights of elevation also helps to accentuate them and makes it easier to tell them apart.

Do note that maximalism is not about cramming as many items as you can into one space. Since the objective is to get individual items to stand out, you don’t want to have too many items at once. Having just enough that you can maintain balance is key! By rearranging your furniture and items through colour properly, you should be able to pick out individual items at a glance, without feeling the entire space is messy. This way, you can also avoid spending too much on buying new items to fit your desired image.

Regardless of whether you go with minimalism or maximalism, the idea is to rearrange your existing items to give your humble abode a fresh new look. This way, when your relatives come over with mandarin oranges in hand, you can surprise them with how different your home looks, and you didn’t even have to buy anything for it! At the end of the day, being able to get a new look while saving on your spendings is surely a strong start to the new year.

Experimenting with colours to revitalise your home

Another way to freshen up your home is simply getting a fresh coat of paint. It may not sound like much, but a freshly painted house will look newer than you’d think!

While it’s certainly okay to just apply a new coat of the same colour as your current wall, you can also consider changing it to something more vibrant. In fact, you can also consider a colour that works with the style you decided on, whether it is minimalism or maximalism. As a general rule of thumb, softer and lighter colours work well with minimalism, and brighter, more vibrant colours work better with maximalism.

In addition, there are certain combinations you can try out to give your home a different feel as well. For instance, if you paint your ceiling a lighter colour than your walls, it creates an illusion where your ceiling feels higher and thus the whole space looks larger and taller. A similar effect can be achieved by having stripes or simple patterns onto the ceiling, so that the gaze of your guests will be drawn to the ceiling. Feel free to be creative with your choice of patterns and colours, and express yourself however you see fit!

Home is about comfort, but it does not have to always look the same. Changing things up every once in a while keeps things fresh, and conjures the excitement of a new home without having to do the actual moving, or even spending a lot on renovations to update your home’s look and feel.

So as you go about spring cleaning your home for the new year ahead, why not give some of the ideas above a shot? You might just discover your new favourite look while you’re at it!

Information in this article is accurate as at the date of publication.