If you prefer old houses to newer ones, then it’s likely to be the charm of the original features and how it is laid out that appeals to you. The issue is that if you are buying an older house, it may need a lot more work done to make it liveable than a more modern house would. Yet, despite the need to do this work, you won’t want to remove that old charm you love so much. 

It can seem like something of a puzzle; you have to do the house up, but you don’t want to strip it of what made you fall in love with it in the first place. The good news is that you don’t have to compromise. You can keep the vintage charm in place and still ensure that the property is comfortable to live in. Depending on your aesthetic, you might even be able to add some modern touches too. Read on to find out how you can make these changes and not upset the balance of how things look to how things feel and allow for comfort. 

Photo by Simon Sikorski from Pexels

Add More Natural Lighting 

Getting the lighting right in your property is crucial when it comes to comfort. Even a cosy little period cottage needs to have lighting in the right places – no one wants to live in a property that feels too dark and is therefore difficult to move around in or just not pleasant to be in. 

Ideally, you’ll want to be able to have as much natural lighting in your home as possible, as this will not only brighten up the space, but the sun’s light has healthy associations and will boost your mood as well as topping up your vitamin D levels. Older houses aren’t always made to allow a lot of natural light in, unlike more modern houses that are much more open to the light. Therefore, you may need to work out how to get more natural lighting into your period home to ensure that it’s as comfortable as possible. 

Adding more windows to the property might seem like the best option, but this can be very expensive, and as well as this, it will change the entire look of the house, and you might lose the period charge that drew you to it in the first place. Instead of immediately turning to the windows, change the wall colour first. If it’s very dark, paint it white or off-white. This will instantly brighten things up, and any natural light entering the property will reflect off this and make things feel even lighter. If you still need to brighten the property, hang mirrors. Again, these will reflect the light you do have and intensify it. 

For bigger changes, consider a skylight before additional windows. These will be less disruptive to the property’s overall look, but will be highly effective at letting natural light in. 

Change The Flooring 

Something that you may need to consider when it comes to renovating an old property to make it more habitable is the flooring, and wooden flooring is the biggest issue. In some cases, that flooring might be hundreds of years old, and although it would be a shame to remove it entirely, if it’s very creaky or damaged in some way (perhaps through water ingress), it may need to be replaced. 

If you do need to replace the wooden floors in your old property, you have some options. You can replace the original flooring with more wooden flooring. This is the best solution if you want to retain the old charm of the place and the initial vintage look, but it’s also an expensive option and won’t be within everyone’s budget. If this is the case and you want to retain the wooden look but pay less, you can install engineered wooden floorboards instead. Engineered wood is durable, easy to maintain, and it’s much less expensive than true wooden flooring. Plus, there are many different styles and colours to choose from, so if you want a slightly lighter colour or you want to match perfectly with the rest of the house, you can. 

Finally, you might not want wooden flooring at all. Some people don’t like it, even if it is what the house would have had initially. They prefer carpeting because it’s warmer and softer and it just suits them better. If this is you, then you’ll still need to work on the original wooden flooring. If you don’t, then covering it with carpeting will only hide the issues, not fix them. However, if you don’t intend to have the floorboards on show, you can remove them entirely and replace them with much cheaper floorboards or even concrete, after which you can place the carpet (and the underlay) on top. 

Decorate The Walls 

If you don’t want to make too many changes but you need to do something to make the property more homely and comfortable, then you can decorate the walls. We’ve already discussed painting them a lighter colour and using mirrors to make things seem brighter (and bigger in some cases), but actually hanging more personal items on the wall can help a great deal and won’t cost a lot at all. 

Use picture frames to hang photos and memories of good times or artwork that you’ve created or bought because it said something to you and it makes you happy. Perhaps you can put together a collage of vintage postcards from the time when your property was built (if they depict the local area, you may even be able to spot your home there, which gives it an added special touch). 

There are dozens of options that you can pick from to make the walls of your property look wonderful and give it a homely feel that won’t cost a lot (sometimes nothing at all), but that will make it feel as though you entirely renovated. Of course, you don’t actually have to change the walls underneath the decorations at all, leaving it just as it always has been and taking away nothing of the fantastic old charm. 

Put In New Doors Or Locks 

Newer properties are much more secure than older ones. They have the latest technology installed in terms of security, and the doors and windows are a lot harder to break into. With an older property, this is not the case; the doors might seem solid, but the locks are vintage and therefore much easier to open without a key. 

To make things more secure and to keep the aesthetic of the older property, you can change the lock and leave the door where it is. Of course, to do this safely, you should check the door properly, ensuring that it’s solid and that by changing the lock, you are making it safer and not just spending money for no reason. When you’re choosing your new lock, you should be able to find one that looks older even if it uses new technology so that the new lock won’t look out of place. 

If the door is not secure and solid, perhaps because the wood is rotting, for example, or it’s just aged poorly, then you should replace the entire door and not just the lock. This is a more expensive project, but it’s one that can prevent break-ins and will keep your home safe, so it is worth doing. Search around for a door that will match the rest of the property, and it will work out well. In the past, this would not have been possible, since there wasn’t a huge amount of choice when it came to front doors, but today with so many different companies selling them, and some even creating them from your requirements and designs, you can now get anything you want.

Alternatively… Get a Professional

When it comes to old houses, while they’re incredible, they can also be fairly fragile too. This is why you need to be careful because you don’t want to take the risk of destroying anything. If there are specific rooms you want to work on renovating without removing the charm, then you could look into Sanctuary Kitchens and Bathrooms as a way to create that dreamy bathroom or kitchen without the hassle or fear of accidentally making the renovations worse. Sure, it’s a bit of extra money, but sometimes it’s totally worth it!