Here are 9 home remodeling trends in 2024 that are truly worth your investment – both time and money.
I’ve divided this topic into two blog posts. Part one is today’s roundup of home remodeling trends that I’ll argue are truly worth the investment. Part two is a more personal overview of how I plan to implement some of those renovations in our own home.
Read it here: Home Renovation Trends Planned for Our New House
This isn’t a “listicle” of ideas, it’s an advice article on how you can implement current remodeling trends in a thoughtful and rewarding way. Let’s dive in and explore current home remodeling trends in 2024.
Overview: What Makes a Trend Worth the Investment?
The easiest way to determine whether or not home improvement decisions are “worth the investment” is to consider how long you plan to stay in your home.
If you’re actively saving money and browsing real estate listings, anticipating a move in the next 1-2 years, it’s worth considering future buyers when you remodel. Reasons why this works:
- you can live with less-desirable changes short term
- buyers tend to prefer safer design choices
- you’ll prioritize updates that will boost your home’s value
- you’ll recoup some of your investment when you sell
However, if you’re in a potential “forever” home, or even just a next-10-years home, remodel for your own family, comfort, lifestyle, and preferences. Reasons why this works:
- you’ll prioritize updates for your comfort
- you’ll be happier in your home
- your home will have more personality, not bland mass-market choices
- even if you eventually move (8-10+ years), home remodeling trends will change by then anyway
Here’s my favorite example of someone’s forever home. Even if the owners move, the next owner will surely have fun customizing this renovated silo-house to suit their tastes. No need for a trendy black-and-white color scheme here, since this home is 100% unique!
Sorry for the weird angle but this was the best I could do. It’s retrofitted for the silo and doesn’t face the street…
Open Concept vs. Separated Spaces
Trend #1: I think the trend here is actually the ongoing debate about whether open concept or separated spaces are currently more in vogue. Who cares? What works best for your lifestyle? That’s what matters the most.
For example, if your partner is a messy cook but you prefer a clean aesthetic, having an open flow between the kitchen and your living spaces will probably cause you anxiety.
However, if you’re a design lover and want to revel in your gorgeous, new, focal-point tile selection, an open-concept floorplan allows you to admire it from all angles.
Which would you enjoy more?
We’re planning to open up some of our walls, but it won’t be entirely open in our central living space. Wyatt actually started this process over the past artic-cold weekend. He removed part of the wall at our entry, and the living room and hallway both feel bigger already. I’ll share a photo in my next blog post.
The point here is that there are arguments to be made for both open-concept and separated rooms. Choose what works best for your home without creating awkward spaces.
Tech-Friendly Living Spaces
This just makes practical sense for our tech-savvy lifestyles. There are so many products available now to help your home get smarter. For many of these options, you don’t need to build a new house to implement them, just a few tools and YouTube tutorials.
A few ideas:
Incorporate smart, multi-purpose outlets so you can easily charge devices throughout your house. Multi-tasking is always on trend! This outlet has two USB ports included. Here’s the same outlet at Amazon.
Upgrade your thermostat with a smart device like these to more efficiently manage your HVAC system. I wrote about our last smart thermostat a few years ago; I chose a white design to blend in with our white walls and now there are even more stylish devices on the market.
Save Cash + Energy With a Smart White Thermostat
Smart security systems, cameras, doorbells, etc. make it really easy to monitor your home from your phone.
Did you forget to close the garage door and don’t want to climb out of bed? Check your phone app and control your smart garage door opener remotely, even when you’re away from home.
I can’t speak to the voice assistant devices/speakers (Alexa, Google Assistant) because I find it creepy to have devices listening to my conversations. My phone does that enough. But they must be incredibly handy for centralizing your smart home technology.
This article from CNET has a good roundup of the best smart home devices.
Energy-Efficient Designs
Beyond LED lightbulbs, I’m talking about bigger remodeling decisions here. Take advantage of a future renovation to update the energy-efficiency of your home.
Here are a few examples:
If you or a contractor will be working in the attic for any reason (running new electrical wire?), consider beefing up the insulation, too. A well-insulated home will reflect savings on your heating and cooling bills.
Remodeling a bathroom? Consider adding radiant heat mats to the subfloor before they are re-tiled. Not only is a warm tile floor incredibly cozy on a cold day, it’s an efficient way to heat the space. This radiant floor product is highly-rated at Home Depot.
Not all homes can be easily retrofitted for energy-efficient technology, but small changes can add up in the long-run. Could you put more light switches on dimmers? Do you have the budget for a tankless water heater? Is now the time to install solar panels or rethink your HVAC design?
Sustainable Design Choices
Let’s start here: consider NOT remodeling parts of your home that are well-built with good materials. Not only to avoid adding construction waste to landfills, but you might already have better materials and construction in place than what’s available today.
This article on the downsides of remodeling is really good food for thought.
If you’re installing a big-ticket item, consider its lifespan. Is it worth budgeting a bit higher for a more durable product with a longer lifespan? Not only will you save money in the long run, you’ll reduce waste if that item lasts for 20 years versus 10.
For kitchens, rather than ripping out kitchen cabinets and replacing them with new ones, can you refinish or paint them? We chose that route in our last kitchen to avoid tossing perfectly good cabinets in a landfill. Of course, this isn’t always possible, but it’s worth thinking through.
Here’s the easiest way to paint cabinets and how we saved thousands on our DIY kitchen remodel.
A Note About Flooring
Flooring is one of the home improvement areas where we typically use a lot of natural resources. Just consider the materials: wood, bamboo, cork vs. ceramic tile and carpet (mostly synthetic, made from oil).
If you want to make more sustainable flooring choices, research the origin and lifespan of the natural materials. There are pros and cons to many of them, so you’ll have to decide what works best for your home and budget.
For example, bamboo flooring exploded in popularity 20 years ago, because bamboo is an incredibly renewable resource. However, it’s also very soft and doesn’t have the lifespan that hardwood species can boast. (try to look past my one-shoe kid and check out the scratches on the bamboo floor.)
Hardwood oak floors will outlast bamboo many times over, even though oak trees take much longer to grow and mature, requiring more resources. Which is the better option?
Some choices are more straightforward. Knowing that exotic hardwoods are threatened by climate change, would a more sustainable wood species work for your living room, instead?
Here’s a brief overview of more sustainable wood flooring options in North America.
Returning to the real oak hardwood flooring example; oak is both durable and relatively sustainable.
Real hardwood floors can be refinished many times, salvaged for future use (unlike engineered hardwoods, which head to the landfill), and oak trees grow faster than many other varieties.
If you can spring for true oak hardwood, it will probably outlive you. If you can’t, you can’t. It’s just a decision to ponder in this category.
I’ve written a comprehensive flooring article here and my two cents on flooring is this: buy the best your budget will allow.
The Best Flooring for Every Room in Your House
New Neutrals and Color
Paint colors are the lifeblood of any home remodeling trends article. Here’s the latest from the design world, and I’ll call it a two-for-one trend.
Design colors and materials are finally warming up after a solid decade of white-on-white.
Wood is coming back in a big way: wood cabinets in kitchens, wall paneling, shelving, and floors. Wood accents add warmth and comfort to a room, if you’re not ready for saturated color.
On that note, color is also seeping back into our homes. Rich kitchen colors, both on cabinets and walls, have been on the rise, with burgundy, plum, and brown favored by designers.
That’s a huge departure from the white farmhouse kitchen of the past 10 years and I am here for it.
If you’re not ready for a jewel-toned kitchen, perhaps try a subtle color for your tile backsplash like a dusty blue or sage green. Those shades are also beautiful with white or wood kitchen cabinets.
So the two takeaways here are a) wood and b) color are back in the mix. They work together to warm up any space and breathe life into your home design.
Laundry Rooms Getting Love
A few years ago, “drop zones” and mudrooms were all the rage, and now the spotlight is on laundry spaces.
There seems to be a zen trend in laundry rooms with muted colors, perhaps a quirky tile, a plant or two… is laundry a stressful task? Or maybe this room feels like a safe place to take design risks because it’s often tucked away and costs less to remodel.
Laundry rooms and bathrooms are the perfect places to try a fun tile pattern in a low-risk, smaller space. This one caught my eye recently at Home Depot.
One of my favorite spaces to remodel at our last house was the laundry hallway. Check it out here.
I’ve seen some great mudroom/laundry spaces in recent local homes for sale, and Pinterest is always fun to explore for ideas.
Here’s my Pinterest board with some of my favorite laundry and mudroom inspiration ideas. This is a trend to embrace and enjoy planning in own your home.
Remodel for Yourself, Not a Future Buyer
Because the real estate market is still tight as we enter 2024, you might decide to stay in place for a bit longer. Interest rates make it expensive to borrow money but inventory is still low, so buyers still feel competitive, even with less wiggle room. That’s a tough spot to be in, on the buyer’s side.
If you invest in key home renovations, you’ll be happier as you wait out the market and increase your home’s value in the long run.
On that note, give your home some personality. Unless you plan to sell imminently, making safe design choices for an imaginary future buyer tends to feel generic and bland.
I’m thinking of the white shaker cabinets in every flipped house I’ve seen since 2020. (Unless you dream of a white shaker kitchen – go for it! I put them in our first house and loved them.) Choose updates that you’ll enjoy in the next few years.
This gorgeous dark wood kitchen (walnut?) caught my eye recently. There’s no denying these cabinets below are gorgeous, so that kitchen stands out in my mind.
It’s different than most of the kitchen remodels I’ve seen in my city, so I know it will also be memorable to buyers. I just wish they had chosen a counter-depth fridge…
Exterior Upgrades With High ROI
With more extreme weather events, our homes need to toughen up to handle the elements. Don’t defer maintenance to your home’s exterior because problems can escalate quickly.
Plus, exterior updates tend to have a high return on investment; you’ll likely get that money back when you sell your home.
Roof replacements are expected when we sell homes here in Colorado, due to frequent hail damage, but they are usually covered by insurance. Even if you pay for a new roof, the return on your investment is close to 100% according to this article about roof replacement.
If you’re in the market for a siding update, consider investing in a fiber cement siding product, like Hardie Board or another brand. This siding product is incredibly durable and low maintenance. I’ve also read that fiber cement siding will recoup 86% ROI when you sell your home (read this summary).
Not only will better windows and doors help your home become more energy-efficient, they rank high on the ROI list. Likewise, a new garage door is expected to return 100% of your investment. No need to keep staring at the dent from your 16-year-old new driver!
Plenty of exterior home upgrades will ultimately benefit both your home and your investment strategy.
Most Affordable Home Remodeling Trend
Of the options in this list, new paint is one of the most affordable ways to hop on a 2024 trending home update.
Update a bedroom with a moody color scheme, or dive into a laundry room refresh with a crisp new shade.
Kitchens are prime candidates for a paint makeover, too. Deciding to live with and love the cabinets you already have is truly the most affordable option.
However, if you’re itching for a change, try painting before replacing them. It doesn’t have to be the nightmare you might anticipate. I’ve written extensively about painting cabinets and you can get some tips in these posts:
The Best Paint for Kitchen Cabinets
How to Clean and Degrease Old Wood Cabinets
How We Saved $20K on Our DIY Kitchen Remodel
Stay tuned for the next installment where I’ll share exactly what we plan to remodel in our new home! I’ll explore which of these trends we embrace, where we save money with DIY and the trend I personally detest. Are you intrigued? Hope to see you back here very soon!
Curious About the Products in the Feature Image?
Here are the specific products featured in the first collage image for this post:
Behr paint color – raspberry crush
