29 July 2020 - As long as you have a good grasp of the essentials: paint, furniture and houseware items, it’s not that difficult to do a make-over of a property in 14 days!
After you understand what decorating lite is all about, you can try to add this concept to your own decoration plans. This time we will use an actual unit to demonstrate with Codeco. This two-bedroom and one-living room flat with a usable area of about 559 sq. ft. was purchased by the owner in 2017. Since it had reached the basic repossession status at the time and the owner intended to use the unit for lease, there was no special decoration inside.
Two years later, the landlord decided to renovate the property within a limited time and budget to make the entire place look more distinctive. This not only made it more comfortable for the landlord living there, but it also effectively allowed him to raise the rental rate when leasing the property in the future.
Two-bedrooms and one-living room (usable area of about 559 sq. ft.)
1. Style: Unique Nordic X
Decoration lite was used to create a more coherent design through color-matching and material selection to flexibly change the overall style of the unit. The owner not only wanted an overall tone of Nordic simplicity and pragmatism, but also desired a stylish and retro feel. Therefore, from paint color to home furnishings selection and placement, it was up to the owner to decide, aiming to create a home that was unique in his heart and full of personal characteristics and charm.
Living room before renovation
Living room after a decoration lite make-over
Dining room before renovation
Dining room after a decoration lite make-over
2. Paint: The combination of white and grey creates a sense of space and layering
The Nordic style generally calls for lighter colors, so white became the main choice in this house. The large white walls also enhanced the overall brightness of the space and make it more comfortable. Adding grey paint to one of the walls in the living room also imparted a sense of spaciousness while emphasizing that strong Nordic style.
At the same time, in order to make it easier for someone to move in as soon as possible, the smart thing to do was to choose clean-smelling paint without any formaldehyde odor.
Gray paint is matched to add layering to the white space
3. Furnishings: Dark furniture embellishments beautifully highlight a three-dimensional interior
When renovating to create a Nordic-style home, many people choose light wood furniture to create a greater feeling of warmth, harmony and a pro-nature look. But the owner here uncharacteristically used his favorite dark wood color TV cabinet, a walnut-colored dining table, dining chair and tea maker, plus a dark green sofa, which all contrasts sharply with the white space but still adds a stylish taste to the entire property.
In terms of decoration lite, custom-made furniture is generally not recommended as this puts restrictions on changing the overall style in the future. However, in order to increase storage space, the new tenant insisted on custom-made lockers.
Nordic-style home furnishings mostly use wood furniture, walnut colors and white space to form a strong contrast
Dark green sofa adds style and a retro flavor
4. Housewares: Use decorations to highlight personal taste and personality
To make the home more stylish, in addition to the overall design concept, appropriate decorations are also essential. Plants are one of the very important elements of Nordic-style homes. That’s why the owner purposely placed plants and potted plants of different sizes to make the house more vibrant.
In addition, the owner also placed numerous decorative items that appear in Nordic-style homes, such as metal pole lights, copper-colored flower vases, dark hanging paintings, etc., giving his unit a light Nordic industrial style, different from other ordinary Nordic design styles.
Potted plants add vitality to a space, which is also in line with the nature ambience of a Nordic-style home
Owner’s favorite metallic decorative item
5. It takes time
The actual renovation time required for each unit is different, depending not only on the square footage but also whether there is additional work involved, plus the overall complexity of the design. Take this demonstration unit as an example. Excluding the extra time it took for the incoming occupant to order the custom lockers, based on a decoration lite plan, here is a breakdown of the overall project time for this 600 ft. unit:
-Add floor protection:
1 day
-Paint (stripping off old paint, apply moisture-proof oil paint primer, add final coats of latex paint):
13 days
-Furniture arrival and installation:
1 day
-Home furnishings:
0.5 days
-Basic cleaning following completion of the project:
0.5 days
About 16 days in total!
*Codeco good master: a one-stop decoration service platform, using technology and professional teams, they match reliable decoration masters and designers, making long and difficult projects easier to master and manage.