Home improvements are a key part of regular home renovations. You want your home to look good, feel good, and increase its worth. High ROI changes are always a top priority, as they will turn your home into a worthwhile investment in case you want to sell it at some point. Today’s high ROI home improvements often include environmentally-friendly changes that reduce the home’s carbon footprint. As long as you know what you’re doing, you can help the environment and make some money while doing so. There’s no shortage of these kinds of home improvements, so here’s a list of some of the most efficient ones you might want to consider for your own home.
Replace your old windows
Poorly sealed windows and doors are the banes of every home. Enormous amounts of air leak out of improper seals, which means that heat also goes through them. This is a common issue in older Australian homes, which leads to skyrocketing heating bills. Not to mention, the home can’t be properly heated around windows, making it a lot less comfortable.
Replacing old, leaky windows is an assuredly good investment. It provides amazing ROI and increases comfort within a home. Best of all, heating bills are reduced, which then reduces the overall consumption of the home. Not bad for such a small adjustment.
Install a skylight or two
Windows are great investments in general. They provide you with the opportunity to let in the fresh air and natural light in your home. This can save you quite a bit on power bills, but only up to a point. You seemingly can’t illuminate every room in your home equally. Or can you?
Skylights help solve the lighting problem in select rooms such as bathrooms. If your bathroom is located on the top floor, installing skylights would be an ideal choice. It would give you lighting throughout the day, while not inhibiting your privacy. This would also lower cooling costs, as you would save money on the bathroom ventilator.
Use a programable thermostat
Heating your home with a regular thermostat comes with some disadvantages in terms of efficiency. If you turn it off before leaving, it’s guaranteed to completely cool off by the time you return. This means you have to wait a solid half hour to an hour before it gets comfortably warm once more. The alternative is to keep the heating on at all times, but this is a waste when you’re not actually at home.
This is where a programmable thermostat can help. You can program it to only activate when you know you’ll be at home. This would prevent any heat from being wasted, while also keeping your home warm whenever you’re inside. You just have to set up a schedule that accommodates you and you don’t have to think about the heater for the remainder of the day.
Replace your lightbulbs
While natural lighting should be a priority when designing your home, you can’t escape using artificial lighting. The sun will eventually go down, and you’ll want to make sure you have the most efficient lighting option you can.
LED bulbs are considered the best choice among artificial lighting options. They’re efficient and last longer than their incandescent counterparts, making them an ideal long-term, eco-friendly solution for home lighting.
Installing integrated lights into walls is a popular choice for new Australian home designs. It’s not too difficult of a task, either. You just need to find a reliable electrician in Sydney that will take care of your lighting installations. While one LED bulb only saves a bit of energy, replacing all of your lights with LEDs leads to massive savings that outweigh the initial costs of LED installations.
Insulate your home
Windows aren’t the only area of your home that tend to leak heat. It can even happen to the walls, roof, and joints of your home. This is often a consequence of old building methods that did not focus on proper insulation.
Solving this will drastically increase the value of your home. Plus, it will also cut heating bills in half, at the very least. Potential buyers in Australia always look into the insulation of a home, as it’s a massive investment with very noticeable effects on the temperature of the home. With this in mind, it would be wise to take care of this problem first, even before looking into other potential investments.
Conclusion
There are countless home improvements you can implement in your home to increase comfort and value, but very few of them will provide a worthwhile ROI. The above examples are some of the better ways to quickly and efficiently improve your home. They are guaranteed to up the value of your home without too many expenses. Whether you want to sell your home or simply enjoy spending time in it with minimal bills, applying high ROI adjustments will be worth the trouble.
