Many people believe the kitchen is the heart of the home. After all, it’s where we prepare our food and gather around to share meals with family. It’s essential in modern homes to use an open plan concept, allowing visitors to peer into your kitchen from your front door.
That’s why kitchen improvement ideas are a popular search term for landlords and their tenants. Even with marble countertops, your kitchen can still look old and tired if the walls are drab, but here are 3 great ways to boost its appearance.
3 Ideas to Improve the Appearance of Kitchen Walls in a Rental Home
Paint the Walls
Brighten up the kitchen with a fresh coat of paint. Grabbing your paintbrush is an excellent way to make the kitchen walls look brand new and beautiful. With the right choice of paint color, older rentals with wall stains and chipped paint can be improved with more aesthetics to the room.
Bay Property Management Group Northern Virginia suggests choosing a paint that enhances visual appeal, particularly in neutral tones like white and greys, which appeal to a wider audience. For tenants wanting a change in the paint color, it’s best to ask permission to repaint. For a property owner who wants to make their rental stand, they can opt for a color with more energy. Salmon, yellow, or cloudy blue are popular non-neutral options that elevate your kitchen’s look without making your rental look like a doll house. But if you’re still apprehensive, you can always opt for an accent wall that adds a splash of color without overwhelming the entire room.
Use Peel-and-Stick Options
Repainting your kitchen can be a lot of work and expensive, especially if you want quality paint. As a result, most property owners restrict tenants from painting the walls or allowing them to do so but limit their options to a specific color palette. Some renters find this a challenge when they want a bright tomato red, but the landlord only permits dull nudes. Well, that’s where peel-and-stick options come into the equation.
Temporary wallpaper and peel-and-stick tiles are every tenant’s best friend because they allow you to beautify your walls without losing your security deposit. These removable options also come in various textures, colors, and patterns, giving you more choices than a uniform bucket of paint. Thus, they’re an excellent choice for rental properties because they cause no damage, have reasonable durability, and enhance the appearance of your kitchen walls.
Add a Backsplash
Keep your paint, cabinets, and removable wallpaper clean by installing a backsplash. Spills, stains, and splashes are common in the kitchen, and your walls often bear the worst from kitchen activities. However, a backsplash can protect your walls while elevating your home’s aesthetics if you opt for ones with unique tones and patterns. A popular interior design choice is to install ceramic tiles on the bottom half of the kitchen and have your cabinets or wallpaper above it.
Importance of a Well-Designed Kitchen
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Enhanced Functionality
Decorate your rental without causing an issue with your lease, but well-thought-out designs should simplify common tasks in your kitchen. Beyond enhancing the room’s appearance, good design should also improve functionality in your kitchen. While a backsplash can make your kitchen more beautiful, especially when you play around with colors and patterns, it also has practical purposes. A good backsplash is heat and moisture-resistant, protecting your walls from damage and making cleaning easier.
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Low Maintenance
Minimize the effort that goes into keeping your kitchen clean by paying close attention to details. A well-designed kitchen should require the least amount of maintenance possible. It will be easier to clean the kitchen area when the materials used are scratch and stain-resistant. Repainting your walls can make it look nicer, but if you don’t use a glossy finish to create a smooth surface, it’ll quickly lose its shine and get dirty again. Thus, well-designed kitchens don’t just save you time, they save you money too.
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Boost Tenant Attraction
Improve the vacancy rates by opting for ideal finishes that attract more tenants. As we highlighted earlier, the kitchen is the soul of every home, and many home searchers are particular when choosing a rental. Sometimes a dirty and old wall can taint the appeal of your rental by narrowing your prospective list of renters and giving your competition the edge. But if you pay enough attention to your designs, your kitchen can be a great selling point that ensures your units never stay empty for long.
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Improved Home Value
Increase your overall home’s value by opting for better designs. In the long run, boosting your kitchen functionality and making it low-maintenance improves the desirability of your rental. Thus, property owners can earn more money when they decide to put their house on the market or increase their rental rate due to its boosted value. Either way, good kitchen designs translate to more cash in return as an investment.
Top 5 cleaning tips for a sparkling kitchen
Conclusion
The kitchen is an essential part of every home, and a well-designed one can improve your home’s functionality, reduce the burden of cleaning it, and attract prospective tenants. Kitchen renovations also boost a home’s price, which allows landlords to charge more rent or turn it into a neat profit if they decide to sell.
A few excellent ideas you can incorporate to improve the appearance of your kitchen walls include installing a backsplash, to protect your walls from stain, heat, and moisture; and repainting the walls or opting for peel-and-stick options. An experienced property manager can guide you through the design process, or help tenants gain clarity on what modifications are allowed on their lease.
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