Upgrade your cabinets with a WOW Effect

This article is discussing how can we upgrade our budget cabinets using simple yet efficient techniques. One of the important aspects when acquiring a new furniture piece for our home is the budget. All of us would like to have fantastic pieces, but unfortunately, not all of us are able to buy without looking at the price tag. And exactly in this situation, the ability and intelligence of playing around with price, quality, and style come into play. What do I mean by that? Well, something very simple: we buy items that fit best our budget, the best quality that we can afford and then we style them ourselves so that they receive that extra special that makes that piece outstanding.

Most of the low- and middle-budget furniture shops sell more or less similar furniture items. Same design, same material, same colors, with small price variation. The same dresser you just bought from Ikea can be found in many other houses. There is nothing wrong with Ikea furniture, on the contrary, it is low-budget and is designed to fit the small spaces in our apartments. And this is a great advantage. 

We can now bring our personal touch to this piece of furniture, so it will represent us and our home style. How do we do that? There are many options and I will provide some examples in this article.

1.Changing the handles

One of the easiest and most cost-effective methods is to replace the ordinary handles which come from the shop with some stylish, colorful, statement ones.

2. Painting the back- or the lateral walls

Adding a contrasting color will enhance the beauty of the objects which will be stored on these shelves

3. Using wallpaper on the lateral or on the back-wall

Wallpaper allows us to be creative with lines, patterns, and floral or animal prints and bring that extra special to an ordinary white/black piece of furniture

4. If the cabinet has no doors (eq. bookcase), add arches in front of the cupboard

Beautiful rounded arches will definitively hide some not-so-nice finishes on low-budget items and automatically give the impression of custom-made furniture.

5. Add crown and/or base molding

This addition will definitely elevate your low-budget furniture. 

6. Add lights

Lights inside the shelves will provide the feeling of an exposition and enhance the beauty of the pieces placed on the shelves. Lights are also functional, allowing you to see better what is inside…think of shelves of a bar full of crystal glasses and colorful bottles.

These are only a few of the endless possibilities of what we can obtain with a bit of creativity. Being creative and “re-designing” our own pieces of furniture can save us a lot of money and can be an extremely satisfying activity to boost our confidence in our skills and capabilities. Not to mention the fact that we own now a quite unique and customized piece that we can display with pride in our homes.

It would be lovely to hear your thoughts. Have you ever done something like this? Or have you just now spotted a furniture item in your room which can easily beneficiate from some “personal touch design”? Or maybe you have applied a completely different method and it would be very nice to hear what and how you did it?!

Let’s start sharing in the comments all the great ideas of how we can update/enhance our homes. 

Yours sincerely, Madra