Home renovation is an exciting yet challenging endeavor. You’ve recently gotten married, or you’re embracing bachelorhood and have just bought your first home. Now, you’re about to embark on your first home renovation project, and we understand, it can feel incredibly daunting!
But worry not, BuildBuilt is here to give you some renovation advice before you dive into your home improvement plans. This list of tips is drawn from our extensive experience with past clients, many of whom were also first-time homeowners!
Let’s start with the basics and then dive deeper.
1. Plan and Prepare with Care
Home is where the life journey begins. It’s a place of respite for you and loved ones to retreat after an exhausting long day. It’s a safe haven where you can unwind and be your true self. It’s also a starting point where new borns will play, learn, and grow.
Home is everything. So, ensure you take ample time to plan and prepare for your dream home, considering the values you want to incorporate.
At BuildBuilt, we ask our clients the following questions before providing design solutions. You should take time to think about these before appointing the interior designer you want to work with. A proper and full design brief will save you heaps of time!
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What does “home” mean to you?
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With whom are you going to live in the new home?
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What is it that you want to achieve within different spaces in your home?
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What good habits do you want to create in your new home and what bad habits do you want to break?
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What are the favourite features you want at home and what are your personal pet peeves?
2. Begin with the End In Mind
Since home is where you spend most of your time (or even a lifetime), having a well thought out plan before starting the renovation is crucial. For example, some clients would integrate family planning within their renovation plans! By planning for future children, clients can designate a future child’s bedroom during renovation planning.
Taking reference from one of our popular projects, Cosy Japandi, involves our clients Thaddaeus and Esther who intentionally avoided creating built-in furniture in their home office. Just in case they needed to convert the room into a nursery in the future!
Rather than focusing solely on immediate needs, expand your renovation plan to accommodate future living situations. Ask yourself:
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What will your living situation be like in the next 3, 5 or 7 years? Will you be living with kids, care for elders, or maybe even be paw-rents (pet parents)?
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Will you be working at home frequently in the future? Will you need a dedicated space to work when the time comes?
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Will you get bored easily with the home interior/furniture?
3. Don’t Dwell on One Interior Style
What is your favourite interior style? Scandinavian, Minimalist, or Wabi Sabi?
While having a preferred interior style can guide your choices of colors, furniture, and decorations, being too devoted to one style may limit your creativity. A home should be built for both aesthetics and functionality. It’s normal to blend more than one interior style to achieve a balanced visual appeal.
Besides, a home should be built not only for aesthetic pleasure but more importantly, functional fervent. It’s totally normal for homeowners to blend more than one interior style in their space. For example, blending boho elements into a generally Scandinavian interior theme should excite the space through unique textures and colors!
Some of our best projects that blend more than one interior styles:
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Wood Teal Home (mid century blended with the retro colours)
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Boho Farmhouse (a farmhouse-styled home with Bohemian decors)
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Nordic Home (a Nordic-style home with mid century furniture)
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Modern Oriental (a contemporary luxe home with Oriental touch)
4. Be Clear: Create Mood Boards and Floor Plan
Mood boards and floor plans are essential tools to visualize your home. They help decide on interior styles, furniture, colors, and decorations. Creating mood boards can be as simple as saving your favorite pictures on Pinterest or using design tools like Canva. It’s really not a hassle these days! In fact, have fun with it.
For floor plans, you can keep default designs (like in BTO homes) or get creative and modify the existing layout. Some of our clients use PowerPoint or even rough pencil sketches to share ideas. Remember, these are just initial concepts to explore with your partner or housemates. Concept mood boards and to-scale-layout plans should be part of your designer’s professional services.
5. Budget Wisely for Your Dream Home
Based on our research and past projects, the minimum budget for a 3-room BTO homeowner is about $35,000 – $40,000. Allocate a larger budget to balance aesthetics and functionality, especially if space is limited and customizations are desired.
Our budget recommendation for homes that carry good aesthetic and functional value are as follows (project size: 1000 sqf):
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HDB BTO: $40,000 – $70,000
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HDB Resale: $70,000 – $100,000
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Condo: $40,000 – $70,000
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Condo Resale: $90,000 – $120,000
These are estimations and subject to change due to market conditions. Rising labor costs, fluctuating material costs and other factors can affect renovation costs. Visit other newly renovated homes and chat with a trusted friend or family member to get a better understanding of renovation costs against the renovation’s scope of work. This will give you an idea of what a fair deal could look like.
However, if you seek better value alignment, renovation budgets should be tied to the overall value of the property. A renovation budget range of 10% to 20% of the home’s value is appropriate for consideration. Homes in different price ranges have varying expectations for finishes and quality. Renovations proportionate to the transaction price can yield a better return on investment. For example, a home that has been transacted for SGD 1,000,000 could have a renovation budget of SGD 100,000 to SGD 200,000. This would ensure a moderately good quality renovation, thereby enhancing the potential return on investment.
Yes, all this can be confusing. Please consult our interior designers and project managers for a chat!
6. Find the ‘Perfect’ Designer for Your Project
Once you have your budget and mood boards crystalised, you may start your search for interior designers. This can be challenging due to the numerous firms with beautiful portfolios and different designer personalities! Here’s a checklist to land the right design firm:
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Check their reviews on Google/Google Maps and take note of the good reviews related to your needs. Some interior designers in Singapore have lengthy reviews. You can get first hand information about their prices, aesthetics, or the ease of their design and build process through reading reviews.
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Shortlist and review their website and portfolio. For example, BuildBuilt’s extensive residential projects are showcased here!: BuildBuilt Residential Projects
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Connect with the interior designer! Have an initial discussion with the shortlisted designers. Are they competent? Do they empathise and feel for you and your project? At BuildBuilt, a Meet & Greet session is crucial for our designers and clients to get to know each other.
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On top of competency and empathy, chemistry and ‘vibe’ with the project personnel is important. Embarking on a challenging project gets easier when you trust the professionals.
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Other than the project team, it is crucial to scrutinise the company’s credentials and structure. Does the company support its staff? How long has the company been around? What is the company’s value-add services? Are there business contingency plans? Are the companies licensed and endorsed by authorities? What values do the company subscribe to?
At BuildBuilt, we believe that relationships are everything. We create bonds within our specialised teams to carry our clients through the project. In addition, every project has a BB Support personnel who will ensure project continuity. The last thing you want is a designer or a project manager to be uncontactable and leave you with no project updates!
7. The Main Thing Is To Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing
A home renovation is a high-stakes project. Costs are high, timelines are tight, and emotions run high. Mitigate risks and skirt around chaos by spending time brainstorming with your designer and project manager. Voice out concerns and be critical if proposed ideas don’t fit your needs. Keep discussions orderly and objective to stay productive! You can emote and let the team know how you feel about certain things. A good interior designer and project manager will actively listen, empathise and create solutions around problems.
At BuildBuilt, we try to keep the main thing the main thing by creating specialised personnel to support your needs. Every project involves a tag team of one interior designer and one project manager. Consult the designer for anything under the design umbrella (ie. space planning, textures, colors, material matching), and the project manager for any technical information (ie. costs, timelines, authority handling).
8. Detail a List of Furniture, Appliances, and even Art Work
During preparation, create a list of furniture, appliances, and decorations for your home. Communicate this with your project team to ensure proper space allocation, especially for built-in carpentry or complex installations.
Many IDs do not include FF&E (Furniture, Fixtures, and Equipment) styling and procurement in their services but offer it as an add-on. Some clients prefer shopping on their own for specific items, often finding better deals through group buys or acquaintances. Visit vendors’ showrooms to try products and consult salespeople for options that fit your home.
BuildBuilt has put together a Home Owner’s Guide for all our clients to walk them through this process.
9. Monitor Your Renovation Progress Consistently
A dedicated home renovation team doesn’t eliminate the need for you visiting the project site! Regular site updates from the team are crucial. A good team should notify you of site works without constant prompting and send site photos for reference. A pro-tip is to arrange a site visit with your project manager. Never jump on site alone. To the layman, rubble is just debris, but to the professional home builder, it is the foundation of a masterpiece. To calm renovation-anxieties, let him/her explain the work-in-progress.
Don’t let assumptions grow into problems when you can address them early. Regular check-ins with your designer or project manager can address potential issues quickly. Stay connected through an active WhatsApp chat group or quick phone calls!
Other hot-tips:
There might be items you might want to add into the mix during renovations. Make sure you connect with your build team first before pulling that purchase trigger! Dimensions and specifications for installations should be double checked before the purchase.
If you are purchasing accessories, equipment or appliances independently, ensure they are on-site before carpentry work begins so the team can integrate them during the construction process. For large item deliveries, inform your team in advance to allocate a proper holding space (typically in a spare room) to prevent damage and avoid obstructing ongoing construction.
10. Stay Flexible and Adaptable
During your home renovation journey, unexpected challenges such as plumbing issues or unavailable materials and furniture may arise.
While it’s important to stay committed to your vision, sometimes flexibility is the key to maintaining progress. Adapting to alternative solutions can prevent long delays without compromising your long-term goals or significantly altering your well-progressed project.
Keep an open mind and collaborate with your interior designer or project manager to overcome these challenges. Their experience and insights can lead to innovative solutions that keep your renovation on track.
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That’s all the renovation advice BuildBuilt has compiled for first-time homeowners (for now!). Happy renovating! While the process may seem daunting at first, it will undoubtedly become one of the most rewarding experiences of your life.
We hope this non-exhaustive guide helps you to get started on your home renovation project with confidence. If you’re interested in working with our team of designers, project managers, and in-house carpenters, let’s connect! Click the button below and fill out the short questionnaire to schedule an appointment with BuildBuilt.
