2020 was the year that we all stayed at home and whilst we were at home, many took the opportunity to hone their DIY skills and give their home a new lease of life. With many tradespeople limiting their work due to Covid restrictions and DIY stores one of the few shops classed as essential and able to remain open, people around the UK decided to make their own attempt at some home interior trends.
We’ve picked our favourite Top 5 trends that are making the rounds, that you could try for yourself.
1. Cladding
It’s hard to avoid a DIY wall cladding job on social media at the moment. Simple and effective, cladding is a great way to add some depth to your walls and add a feature to your room whilst being relatively simple to do. There are different ways to tackle this project depending on your level of DIY skill. You can either buy the cladding panels separately, building your effect by cutting and attaching them in a row, or you can buy sheets of cladding readymade. Choose either a natural wood that can be varnished or oiled which will add a nice warmth to any room or simply paint your favourite colour. The wood panels can reach from floor to ceiling or you can finish partway up the wall. If you choose the part wall option, remember to add a dado rail to the top of your cladding panels to finish off the look. Once all panels are attached and holes and edges filled in, you can paint or varnish over the top.
2. Panelling
Similar to the cladding trend, another way to add a simple effect to your walls is by creating panels. Again, there are a few ways to go about this, either by using dado or picture rail to create rectangular or square ‘frames’ around the wall or you could choose wider, flatter wood strips to create larger grids. Arguably, depending on your DIY experience, this trend is a little trickier than the cladding option as it takes more measuring and an eye for spacing. The trick for this one is measure, measure and measure again. Like cladding, the amount of material needed depends on the size of the project but in terms of the different materials needed, it’s all quite simple and straightforward and easily found at your local hardware shop. Adding the finishing touch is down to personal preference, you could paint the panelling the same as the wall itself, or you could highlight it even further in a different colour. The choice is yours!
3. Crittall style doors
You may not be familiar with the term, but you’ve no doubt seen this style of windows and doors with black edging, normally in a grid effect. Not just confined to windows and doors anymore, this trend is popular with shower screens too. Although Crittall is a brand, you’ll find that many other suppliers have their own version of this modern, thin, black frame. Taking it one step further, 2020 was the year that many homeowners made their own version with some low-cost hacks. From spray paint to electrical tape, there are lots of examples of DIY success, and failures, trying to achieve this modern, sleek effect for a lower cost.
4. Vinyl wrapping
Without doubt, the most expensive rooms to update in your home are the kitchen and bathrooms. Between the cost of tradespeople, materials and the kitchen and bathroom itself, it can cost thousands of pounds and, at the moment, many of us can’t afford to shell out that kind of money. But luckily there are ways to update an older style kitchen or bathroom with vinyl wrapping. Of course, this depends on the style of your kitchen doors, normally wrapping works best on a flat door to eliminate the risk of bubbles. The process involves large sheets of sticky vinyl or ‘sticky back plastic’ and covering your kitchen doors, worktops, bath panels, vanity units and anything else with these sheets. With this new trend, you can take a dark wood effect kitchen and change it to a modern matt blue in a few hours. Level of DIY expertise varies on this, from the size of the overall project and the intricacies of the style of kitchen that you have. The choice of styles and colours really is endless, you can pick any colour and lots of finishes from matt, gloss, glitter and patterns like marble.
Of course, if you’re looking to update your kitchen cupboards and vinyl seems a bit daunting then a simple paint job could do the trick. Many brands provide paint especially for this kind of job, and again, your colour choice is vast.
5. Barn doors
Getting the most space out of your property is key and for small rooms, doors opening into the room itself can restrict where furniture goes and become a bit of an eyesore. Adding sliding doors could help with both the space issue and could become a feature of the room too. Of course, sliding doors aren’t a new thing but recently, the barn door style has become more popular and can actually be fitted yourself. Barn door kits can be purchased online and there may not be any need to buy a new door, you could use the door you already have – just fill in the holes from the existing brackets and maybe give it a lick of paint. Another simple DIY job and talking piece for your home!
