Whole house to decorate- feeling overwhelmed by choice

[romance123]

I've been lucky enough to move into my dream house in May.

The house is more or less fine, but needs redecorating throughout as the carpets are really old and dirty, and the walls need repainted.

There are also 4 bigger projects I need to do in reasonable time- but I've been put off by the excessive cost: loft extension for 2 more bedrooms; update bathroom- including knocking down wall to make it bigger; adding a second toilet somewhere; knocking down wall to make kitchen diner; converting garage into home office.

But I'm just going to redecorate first so we can live in it properly- then look into those projects in about a year.

I first thought I would get the same carpet throughout and paint the same colour throughout to freshen everything up and leave it at that.

But now I've booked different weights of greyish carpet for stairs landing and bedrooms. And the living room is very pale beige (which I know I will regret!!)

I have a thousand different ideas for paint and wallpaper for all the rooms- and finding it really hard to narrow it all down.

Also what I thought was in theory a quick, simple refresh is costing £10k (£4k carpets, £6k decorating and materials).

My partner thinks I'm mad to be spending that, but I have no capacity whatsoever to do anything myself, with pets, children, working full time and the garden- I can barely organise dinner and clean clothes for everyone- let alone tackle any diy projects.

I suppose I'm finding the choice of options overwhelming, but I suppose I should go to my paint shop, and limit my samples of paint and paper to what they stock, so I don't get too confused by options.

My living room is painted white and looks quite light and fresh. However it is a long room with one end facing north and the other facing south- so would the same white work in the whole room? As I read a lot about warm or yellowish whites not working in certain lights, but being perfect for others- but what if you have both?

I repainted our house last year, after ten years. Every room is now a different colour and I adore it. Will try attach some pictures in case you want to do something more drastic with colour.

If you are plannng building work in a years time I would paint everything white to make it clean and fresh.Donot spend lots on flooring.Keep it simple Everything will be ruined by building work,dust,rubble etc.Save the money towards the building work and then decorate to your choice.Good luck.

I agree. Off White throughout and no new flooring until all your building work is fine.

And a couple more. Including our new yellow front hallway.

My advice would be not to do it all at once. If you do, it will all start to look dated/need redoing at the same time next time!

Plus if you do it in a hurry you'll end up with a house that's better than it was, but not what you would have chosen with more time.

What are your tastes like? Do you like bright colours or muted tones? So, for example if you get a Farrow and Ball colour card is that to your taste? Find a paint company who you love, use them for inspiration. If you love a very expensive one use a colour matched paint (eg valspar from b and q). Don't paint or put carpet down where workman will be going up and down (eg the stairs).

It does cost alot to do this as I've just found out. I took the opposite approach to the PP and painted every room brilliant white when they were previously all different (dark) colours. I have black painted floorboards throughout (just refreshed those)

it looks lovely and makes such a difference to my happiness. There's loads more I need to do in my house, but I don't have the money for that and didn't want to wait to do it all at once (as I'd be waiting years).

Agree with PP advising against replacing carpet before major building work - could you get a professional in to give them a really deep clean? They'll probably be fine for another 12 months and you might feel differently about flooring once you've thought about your other projects.

Absolutely no point in carpet if your having building work. Honestly. You at as well throw 4 k down the loo.

Hire a professional carpet cleaner and live with the carpet.

I've renovated a old house and waiting 2 years for some carpet and our carpet was BAD

Navy and teal with orange is the new grey and bold bright wallpaper is back.

I also agree with your partner it’s crazy to do this for a year, unless you’re made of money, even then it’s still crazy.

We've recently moved and are decorating too, so I understand your indecision.

If it's any help, we've gone with standard white for ceilings and woodwork everywhere, neutral window coverings and the inherited carpets are plain light beige.

Downstairs and stairs/landing is F&B Skimming Stone, a beige-grey neutral (Johnstons do the best dupe), which works well in our SE-NW lounge and dining rooms.

Kitchen/conservatory is Dulux Fine Cream, to match the existing units.

We splurged on light fittings, and added rugs, cushions and plants for interest.

I did a large self build. By the end I was completely burned out. I let the kids choose their wall colours and had the rest sprayed a soft white (jasmine white I think from Dulux). Did a great holding job.

Unless you are made of money don’t do it.

we worked out which room wasn’t going to be touched by building and did that one so we had one room nice. Everything else we lived with for 2 years.

the dust for a loft extension is ridiculous, even with coverings on the floor. As we hadn’t redecorated it was easy for them To channel new electric into walls, rip up carpet for new plumbing, take the edge strip off the carpet when they eventually did paint. Honestly the place was trashed.

don’t do it and cancel the carpets.

I'd paint the walls some form of white, and get the carpets professionally cleaned. Replace them after the building work is finished.

Agree with the others just paint the whole lot white. Plain white is great to just freshen it up. If you don't like white, you can then treat that as an undercoat when you come to paint and carpet when your various projects are done.

It costs jist as much to paint it all white, maybe slightly less as you can job lot the paint but the Labour is the same, it’s crazy to repaint a whole house when in a year you’ll be knocking bits down.

and agree with others on the carpet, just get a proffessional in, doesn’t cost much, about fifty quid a room or something,

I'll go against the grain with the carpet cleaners - I don't think I live somewhere particularly expensive but here it's £5-10 m/2. So just doing the lounge was £20. I got quite for doing the entire house before we moved in (empty so easy I thought) that came in between £300-600. A carpet cleaner from HSS (not the rug doctor from the supermarket) and 5 litres of carpet cleaner from Screwfix is a hell of a lot cheaper and what we did to get rid of the post builder dirt.

We also went with a trade mix of timeless throughout just to clean the place up while we decided what to do. Maybe a bit dull but can help make the house feel like yours

In the same boat here, moved in April and whole house needs decorating. Dream house for us too and we intend to stay for a long time. We have chosen an off white paint - Dulux timeless and neutral carpet - Cormar woodland mist which we will use in all the rooms for now. White woodwork everywhere. I just want a clean blank canvas and then can take time and enjoy planning each room. Before we do anything though we are doing the messy jobs like sanding walls and beams, bits of plastering and installing a woodburner. I have a scrapbook / Pinterest boards for each room and yesterday wrote a timeline of when things need doing. This really helped as I was getting overwhelmed with trying to do everything at once. As there is so much choice I am just trying to buy things that we (I!) really like and not worrying too much about having everything matching.

A year is nothing so I wouldn’t be spending a lot on decorating anywhere that is likely to change. Maybe one or two of the bedrooms so there’s a nice sanctuary?

Agree with getting carpets cleaned for now, we hired a carpet cleaner and it worked well

My dad has done up endless homes and always told us to do it once and right. £10k on something for a year is money down the drain.

Wish we'd listened! When I look back we messed about with a new toilet here, a bathroom there... and then gutted the place and got it to the shape I could have sketched from day one. Just cheap plain white paint is the best basis for long term decisions anyway.

We are north south double sided windows too. I will admit it is completely different to our previous east west house and all my off whites of choice are very different here.

My fav white in the old houses was shadow white and shaded white - a green beige greige. Sounds odd but it was just perfect. Soft tones of cream, olive or grey.

Here I have had to move to the lightest in the colour series - school house white and still looks very strong - more green, brown or an off grey. It works in the day but looks too mucky with a warm tinged bulb so we will be switching to bright white.

The search continues!

I am now verging to even lighter whites and also less warm toned for my next attempt.

BtW well worth doing because to understand your white is so important to building colour later. I currently have a whole house post renovation in strong builders white and I can assure you that’s actually very paralysing.

I’ve just had almost the whole house repainted, Natural Calico on hall, stairs, landing and one bedroom, white bathroom and living/dining room with a deep green on one wall. Yellow and white kitchen, Steele blue main bedroom so a real mixture.
I also have new engineered wood flooring downstairs and will get new carpet for stairs, landing and bedrooms in September.If I were you I wouldn’t waste the money on a temporary fix, let alone new carpet, wait until you can crack on and do the lot.
I have always done it piecemeal in the past, never again!

Unless you can afford to write off that amount of money, I wouldn’t bother doing anything, because absolutely everything will need to be done again once your building work is finished. And under no circumstances would I put down brand new carpet - no matter how careful your builders are, it’ll all be thick with dust and utterly trashed by the time you’ve had walls knocked down and all the different trades traipsing through.

I think your £10K estimate is probably about right, depending on where you are, and once the big work starts you’ll probably be grateful to still have that in the bank. IME everything ultimately takes longer and costs more than the highest estimate, so I’d hang onto every penny bc you’ll probably need it.

In the short term I’d give everything a good clean up, rip out the minging carpets and live with bare boards you can just sweep clean. Kids literally don’t care, and a year will fly by once you properly get into the planning and quoting and budgeting for the work you want to do. With everything else you’ve got on your plate, don’t underestimate the time and headspace all that will take up .

Decorating is the nice bit, but I’d wait to get the other stuff out of the way first!

(Btw, if you still feel overwhelmed when it comes to making all those choices, I’d highly recommend Canva as a place to keep visual references, room photos, colour swatches, product details, prices, etc. I literally made a page for each room in my house and kept adding and adjusting, so that by the time we actually came to decorate we pretty much had an exact template for each room. You can experiment with different looks and combinations, pin stuff you love and add in pics of your own furniture. Rather than just going straight to putting paint on walls and hoping for the best, which has never panned out that well for me in the past!)