Home Refresh: Professional Redecoration Ideas for a Calmer Home

You’ve decluttered and organised your home and have set-up some good routines to help you maintain it. Your home feels lighter, calmer and functions so much better for your family. A weight has been lifted.

But now you’re noticing that rooms look a little tired and you want to lift the mood so it’s time to redecorate. New paint or wallpaper and refreshed woodwork will make the space feel more polished and intentional.

If you don’t have the time, energy or skills to tackle it yourself this is the type of job that can drag on. The good news is a professional home decorator can help you make the transformation.

I invited Tamsin from Tamsin Decorates in Derbyshire to help you get started.

Why Redecorating Can Transform More Than Just a Room

You’ve had a refresh by reorganising a room or space to meet your needs, yet decoratively it may still look the same.  Redecorating a room creates a new ambience, refreshes tired walls and woodwork, gives a space an environmental detox and elevates the reorganisation of your home to the next level, helping to embed behaviours to avoid the slip back to where you’ve come from.

When Professional Redecoration Is Worth It

On the face of it, redecorating a room sounds like a straightforward task, but there’s more to it than simply repainting or wallpapering walls. 

Save Time and Decision Fatigue

DIY decorating is time consuming. 

Busy lives mean squeezing jobs in around work and family life, sometimes resulting in half-finished tasks and you soon lose motivation to complete a job. 

You might be deterred by the cost of getting someone in to redecorate, as well as the concerns of allowing a stranger to remain in your home while you’re at work. 

Remember that your time has an intrinsic cost too, be that using annual leave from work or precious weekends to carry out DIY, not to mention the trips back and forth to the DIY store to buy items you never knew you needed and now need to find a home for.

Creating a Polished Finish that Lasts

A good quality redecoration project requires more than painting or wallpapering walls. 

When you hear that “it’s all in the preparation”, there’s reason for this: repairing imperfections, cleaning and sanding surfaces all leads to a flawless finish when finishing paints and wallpapers are applied. 

Your newly revitalised space deserves attention and care to realise its full potential and help you mentally connect with maintaining a clutter-free room.

Decorating Inspiration and Guidance

Some of my clients have a clear idea of what they want, some require inspiration or coaching to find what works for their home.

I changed career and retrained as a painter and decorator, gaining my Level 2 City & Guilds Technical Qualification, which means I have developed a sound working knowledge of how to redecorate your home.

I enjoy the process of helping a client to choose colourways, how different tones and contrasting shades can make a room feel welcoming and homely, as well as the physical process of redecorating and transforming a space.

Home Refresh Ideas That Make a Real Difference

Use a Feature Wall to lift the Mood

Feature walls are still very much a trend that isn’t going anywhere and is an affordable way to introduce wallpaper to create a theme or mood in a room.  This doesn’t have to be limited to a living room or bedroom – hallways and bathrooms are becoming favourite places to introduce patterns and designs to lift the mood.

Clever use of Colour

When choosing colour palettes for your room, firstly consider the size of the room and the aspect, that is where the natural light enters the room and which direction it faces. 

North-facing rooms can benefit from lighter shades to introduce light, while south-facing rooms can be emboldened with darker tones. 

Smaller rooms can be made to feel airy and spacious with lighter tones – you can usually get away with a darker feature wall too.  Larger rooms can carry off the current trend of colour-drenching, with furniture positioned to break up the intensity of the colour.

Show your Personality

If you have a favourite or much-loved piece of furniture or ornament, use it as inspiration for your décor.  Use accents of colour to highlight areas in your room, such as a feature wall, dado rail or even skirting boards and architraves around doors.  Be brave!

Preparation is key to a good finish

Decorators often talk about preparation being the most important part of any project – don’t skip it!  Degreasing walls with a sugar soap wash, filling fine cracks and imperfections with a fine surface filler and sanding down surfaces are the basic steps to ensure your newly painted walls are free from imperfections such as ‘flashing’ – blotchy areas where newly applied paint may appear shiny or uneven.

What should I look for in a Decorator?

What to look for in expert decorating support:

Before meeting with a decorator to discuss your needs, think about what you’d like to achieve. Do you already have a vision for your room, or are you unsure where to start? A good decorator will be able to help develop your inspiration and bring a fresh perspective to your project. 

A City & Guilds qualified painter and decorator will have an in-depth understanding and knowledge of the key aspects of painting and decorating, having gone through thorough training and passed exams to achieve their qualification. 

It is also important that any tradesperson working in your home is fully insured to carry out their work. 

An up-to-date DBS check (a UK criminal record check) can also provide extra peace of mind, especially if you are not at home during their working hours.

Often, word of mouth recommendations are a good starting point as friends or family can give first-hand experience and feedback about a decorator they have used in the past. 

Professional Home Decorating in Derbyshire