When building a new home, making clever choices about the features will add to your enjoyment and also contribute to the lasting value of your home.
- Design for natural light
- Invest in street appeal
- Opt for open plan living
- Consider kitchen fittings and finishes
- Include a butler’s pantry
- Highlight bathrooms
- Feature flooring
Rather than playing the careful card when you decide to build a home, you are much better to choose lasting upgrades that you can enjoy with confidence, knowing they will also be desirable to future buyers. If and when you’re ready to sell your home one day in the future, you want a strong return on your investment, so knowing what to invest in upfront can help.
Design for natural sunlight
You might think you can manage with a small laundry room with minimal natural light to tackle the clothes washing for your family, but that doesn’t mean the next homeowner will agree! Wouldn’t it be better to make the laundry more spacious and welcoming, perhaps with a modern external door that has full-length glazed window panels to let the natural light in.
Optimise your investments for resale
By putting your money into certain quality features, fixtures, fittings and appliances, you can help to make daily home life more practical, seamless and beautiful. This is how to use your budget wisely and choose top upgrades to create a home that is a breeze to sell in the future when it’s time for your family to move on.
Add serious street appeal
First impressions do count, so you want to impress the moment people arrive at your home. The façade should be designed in a way that is balanced with the perfect mix of colours and materials. Colours should complement, blend or contrast each other. It’s worth working with an experienced interior design consultant to choose the best scheme, which is why we include a professional designer free of charge and not on commission in our design showroom.
There are so many exterior materials to choose from for your façade: brick or render, stained timber cladding or painted weatherboard cladding, tiled roof or Colorbond® steel, feature tiles, feature brick or feature stack stone. Getting the look right can add value to your home today, and for decades to come.
Open up the floorplan
Open plan living is a trend that’s not going away. When you design a house, think of how you want daily life to flow between the alfresco, kitchen, dining and living areas.
Ease of living: The reason homeowners love the ease of open plan living is that it lets family life flow between the essential needs for living, dining, cooking and entertaining.
Natural light: The open floor plan is also a win for natural light, without unnecessary walls carving up your home - the windows and doors can let the sunshine in!
Spacious is superb: Homes that are open plan often convey a sense of elegance and luxury. In Australia, even in our capital cities, we are blessed with a sense of spaciousness in our home environment that would be the envy of population-dense cities overseas where space is at a premium!
Consider the kitchen
For the considerable time we spend in the kitchen – cooking, eating, chatting, entertaining, doing last-minute homework – it’s important to make it a beautiful space crafted with quality materials. When you design home spaces, imagine how a grand island bench in the kitchen might enhance your lifestyle. With the kitchen being the focal point of a home, we recommend dedicating a decent amount of your budget to this area as this will add the most value down the track! But how can you enhance your island bench?
Go big: There are many different options for over-sized grand island benches to up the opulence factor of your kitchen, and at Henley, we include a grand island bench as standard!
Waterfall edge: This is where the benchtop surface cascades down one or both sides of the benchtop to meet the floor for ultimate elegance.
Benchtop overhang: This benchtop feature is ideal for larger breakfast stool décor and provides another comfy communal spot to eat or be together. At Henley, we recommend the overhang is at least 450mm wide.
Benchtop colours and thickness: There are many benchtop materials on offer in 20mm or 40mm. For extra style points, you can also carry the same benchtops through to other rooms in your home, such as the ensuite, bathroom, powder room and laundry.
Appliances: What is a kitchen without appliances? Our Henley offer SMEG appliances as standard.
Investing in the kitchen will add lasting value to the home, as it is always a key focal point not just for resale but for your everyday living!
Include a butler’s pantry
Speaking of kitchens, the new home builder trend is to have a butler’s pantry – which acts as a second mini kitchen and is designed to free up space in your main kitchen, helping to keep the mess out of sight. There are many ways to upgrade your butler’s pantry, starting with enhancing the size of the floorplan dedicated to this space. You can also luxe it up by carrying through the 40mm edge benchtop you may have already chosen for your main kitchen. There are also splashback options, such as tiles or glass, that can boost the interior design cred in the space. And luxury items like an inset round feature sink or top-notch chrome appliances to match the main kitchen, plus you can add drawers and shelves for the ultimate convenience of storing, stacking and seeing! You may also want to consider wowing with quality appliances, such as a Smeg stainless steel dishwasher, making those cleaning chores that bit more enjoyable.
Highlight the bathroom
Bathrooms are no longer simply treated as functional spaces - they are now some of the most beautiful rooms in a new home. You can upgrade the star power of your bathroom by paying close attention to features like the benchtops, where you can choose from materials such as the 20mm or 40mm benchtops in a range of colours. It’s also worth considering the luxe factor of the fittings and fixtures. Chrome mixer taps and rain-style shower heads are popular features, as well as dual amenities and ensuites to every bedroom. New designer shower screens also bring a sleek statement to a modern bathroom with semi-frameless shower screens becoming more popular and larger tiles add luxe impact for all the designer appeal!
Feature flooring
Flooring is one of the most decorative features in your home – a powerful statement or a subtle style celebration – it can be used in every room and with an open living floor plan, it gets a lot of empty dance space to show itself off! The choices are endless, but with quality at every step, it’s a lasting investment.
Engineered timber flooring: There is no doubt that engineered timber flooring is a timeless choice and worth the investment as it brings a luxurious vibe to your home and exudes wonderful warmth and opulence. The trend is for lighter timber hues, coupled with luscious, monotone rugs. Engineered timber consists of a thinner top layer of hardwood, glued on top of plywood.
Laminate: Laminate comes in seemingly endless colours and choices, with the timber-look flooring technology developing in leaps and bounds! Laminate is so versatile and durable, it can be used in rooms from living areas to hallways, leisure spaces and theatre rooms.
Carpet: Homeowners will always love the carpet in certain rooms for its comfort and elegance. Remember to choose soft and plush quality carpets that will last the test of time! Lighter tones and warm grey colours are on trend with looped pile carpets. Aim to avoid the strong patterns. Neutral colour palettes and styles will make it easy for future buyers to fall in love when they look down.
Tiles: Tiles are loved because they are easy to look after and durable. Choose top quality tiles in neutral, lighter tones. The modern concrete look or the stone tile is trending. In a bathroom or ensuite, you can introduce that ‘hotel feel’ with full height tiles to all four walls of the space.