Making money on feature walls?

[CatsWearingTutus]

A friend of mine who is unemployed is fixing up her house with a view to increasing its value. She has already moved a wall to increase the size of the kitchen, gotten the ceilings resurface to remove that ugly artex stuff and is going to replace the awful flooring in the lounge with real wood. These are all in my opinion good ideas.

However. She is also planning on spending £££ on really expensive wallpaper to put in a feature wall in each room. This is in a small terraced house but the wallpaper she has selected would look more in tune with the palace of Versailles. She is getting rid of the lovely custom built wooden cabinets in the kitchen to replace them with something "more modern" from ikea and she's going to paint the tiny entryway in a dark colour. Her reasoning is that by making the entryway look smaller the lounge will look bigger in comparison?!

So, is she right that these changes will massively add value to her house as she thinks they will? And if she's wrong do I say anything? If it were just that she was doing these things to suit her own taste then obvious I'd keep my mouth shut but that isn't the case here. What would you do?

She couldn't be more wrong, IMO. Does she not watch any of the property market programmes on TV? I haven't watched any for a while, but there was one which featured houses the owners were having trouble selling, and the advice was always the same: make them more neutral, lots of pale colours to make rooms seem bigger etc. Taste in wallpaper is very personal, and lots of people (like me) hate all wallpaper, so having something I would have to remove would put me off.

Maybe suggest she should get a local estate agent or two in to give her advice on what goes down well in the local market before she 'invests' in expensive wallpaper. There are also lots of books and websites on how to decorate/stage your house for sale. This is quite a good one, and says things like "As for bold wall colors, they have a way of reducing offers, so go with neutrals in large spaces."

I doubt she'd make money on any decorative stuff - people only pay more for that stuff on diy shows. Making kitchen bigger sounds good, but she's best to make the place look as neutral as possible. I wouldn't bother replacing kitchen either. Personally I wouldn't pay more for a house with a new kitchen unless that kitchen was exactly to my taste - otherwise I'd want to replace it anyway.

Maybe you should send her this article on what DIY improvements add most value to your house - it specifically says: "If profit is your motive, beware putting too much of your own personality into this particular DIY project... If, for instance, you want to ruin value then lots of heavy dark colours with a plethora of clutter will do the job nicely. If you want enhanced value keep it neutral, light, airy and luxuriate in elegant simplicity.”

You can always tell on Homes Under the Hammer when they have decided to keep the house as they actually add colour to it otherwise its all plain and bland.

A dark hallway is cold, claustrophobic and unwelcoming IMO. Feature wallpaper is generally OTT and hideous. I am pretty nifty with a paintbrush, but given a choice between two houses where one of them doesn't require immediate attention I would go for the one without the dark hallway and "in your face" wallpaper - and so would most buyers.

I am not a fan of magnolia either, but it is easier to live with and paint over than dark paint, which might take several coats of paint to cover, and wallpaper which would need stripping off.

It took two attempts on the housing market to sell our last house. On attempt one we had a hallway with dark wallpaper. After 6 months or so we took it off the market because none of the viewers showed much interest. We had the hallway decorated with plain lining paper and painted a buttermilk colour then put it back on the market. We got three offers within weeks.

Errrrk sounds awful, frankly. Sorry. I've been house hunting recently, and wanted unmessed about with interiors, and feature walls just put me off when I saw two pretty much the same houses, one with, one without. I hadn't come across this downmarket new interior style, and I can't say I'm taken with it in a big standard Victorian terrace. In one house I looked at it would have been money off my offer, because I'd have had to spend that much getting rid of the "feature wall"

The other renovations sound OK, but ripping out custome built cupboards?!

I think she's got it totally wrong. The small dark hallway will give a dreadful first impression. I'm not a huge fan of feature walls. Currently looking for houses and my heart sinks when I spot one in a house. One of the first things I'd do would be to have to strip all that wallpaper off. It wouldn't stop me buying a house but I'm less likely to fall in love with it and want to buy it.

OP, I think you knew the answer yourself, and I agree with you. Versailles wallpaper is for your long term house, if you like that kind of thing, and most certainly not for selling up. And a new kitchen can only add value if it's a marked step up from what was there before... Even then, probably not the amount spent on it. And disimproving the hallway is going to leave a first impression of, well, a bit of a mental house.

The only time I think it's worth jazzing up a room for selling is where it's plain to the point of looking unused or unloved. But it takes more than a feature wall to convert a dumping ground into a usable room.

Instead of just trying to talk your friend out of things, spend a bit of time with her analysing what each room is for, and working out how best to show off that purpose. Work out what aspects of the decor really are letting it down... Chipped skirting boards, crappy lampshades, no bath panel (I'm just describing my house now!) it sounds to me like your friend needs something positive to be doing, and I bet you can help her find something cheaper to do that will really improve her chances of selling.

If she won't take it from you, get your friend to ask round several local estate agents and get their view. After all, they actually know about local markets. Getting back money you've spent to do up a house isn't easy as far as I understand!

If she has time on her hands, personally I'd be doing stuff like making sure that the finish on everything like woodwork, clean grouting was really excellent and the garden was nicely done - stuff that takes lots of time but very little money but can make quite a bit difference to the impression a house gives.

Does you friend actually intend to move btw, or is this all a bit theoretical?

Crazyhead she says she plans to sell in about two years when all the work will be done - she has to save up for the wallpaper and kitchen units first. Ok so it looks like she's making a mistake so the next thing is how to tell her without hurting her feelings or causing her to get defensive. I like the idea of advising her to check with estate agents before proceeding and the idea of sending her a link to an article. Thanks all.

I do love loud wallpapers on a feature wall, but I would say that's very personal - we're currently house hunting and I rarely see one that is to my taste. Even if it was similar to what I like, the joy (to me) of buying a house is to go in there with paintbrush and colour and make it your own, so it's unlikely buyers would keep the walls that way.

Too much risk that you're actually putting people off, imo.

Maybe you could advise her to do a feature wall in paint if she's set on the feature wall idea? If you can persuade her that a contrasting colour (not necessarily dark!) would be a much more appealing thing than a wallpaper that is harder to change than paint. Cheaper for her too.

As for the kitchen, taking out bespoke units is nuts and will just eat into get profit! I'd say advise her to paint them a modern colour, maybe invest in worktops if she wants to spend wisely. And on appliances she can take with her!