Hands up if you want to do some easy DIY home projects this weekend that can transform your home without breaking the bank? Right? There’s something incredibly satisfying about ticking off a home project. Especially when it doesn’t require a full-blown renovation, a team of tradespeople, or a massive budget. Often, people, including me (…definitely me), are put off from doing home renovations due to the immense effort and budget that is involved. I want to do so much in my home but when I think about what needs doing it can feel really overwhelming and disruptive. But there are lots of affordable home improvement projects that can be done easily in just a weekend. All that is needed is just a little time, money, a bit of creativity, and a few clever tricks can make a huge difference to how your home looks and feels.
So, if you’ve been itching to give your space a bit of a refresh, these easy DIY home projects are perfect for a weekend makeover. From simple home upgrades to quick style swaps, they’re the kind of improvements that are totally doable when you’re feeling inspired on a Saturday morning.
Reflect Light and Style with a Statement Mirror
Arch mirror from Neutypechic
You can transform your home with a statement mirror. Adding a mirror is one of the easiest ways to instantly elevate a room, because mirrors have a way of changing the way a room looks. A mirror not only reflects light and makes the room feel brighter, it can also help to create a sense of space and make a room feel bigger. Try positioning a mirror opposite a window to bounce soft natural light around the room.
And if you choose something with personality—a bold frame, an antique finish, or an organic shape—it can double up as a piece of art. Adding statement mirrors is one of those simple DIY home upgrades that has a big impact with minimal effort and minimal cost.
Play with Peel-and-Stick Wallpaper
Neutral Botanicals Removable Wallpaper Mural Available At Wallsauce.com
If you’ve ever stood in front of a paint chart feeling overwhelmed, peel-and-stick wallpaper might be your new best friend. It’s a fun, low-commitment way to experiment with colour, texture, and pattern. And the best part? You can remove it without leaving a trace.
Use it to create a feature wall in a living room or bedroom, line the inside of open shelving, or even add interest to a plain hallway. This is one of the most budget-friendly home improvements you can make—and it’s a great way to explore your personal style without committing to anything permanent.
Transform Your Front Door with a Pop of Colour
A beautiful front door entrance. Image c/o Yesterhome
Your front door is one of the first things people notice about your home and it really sets the scene for how you want to feel as you step inside when you return after a hard day. Giving it a fresh coat of paint can completely change the tone and character of your exterior. It really is one of the easiest ways to upgrade your home exterior for maximum impact.
Try painting a few swatches onto card and taping them to your door so you can see how the colour shifts in different light. Whether you go bold with teal or yellow, or keep it classic with black or sage green, it’s an easy DIY home project that delivers an instant boost in curb appeal. And if you’re feeling adventurous, paint the inside of the door too—why not let that cheerful colour greet you on your way out and in?
You’d be amazed how something as small as a cupboard handle can transform a space. Swapping out tired or mismatched hardware on kitchen cabinets, bathroom drawers, or even internal doors is a simple home upgrade that brings everything together.
Choose hardware that works with the overall mood of your space—brushed brass for warmth, matte black for contrast, concrete door handles for an industrial feel or mix and match for an eclectic look. Don’t forget areas like towel hooks, door hinges, and light switch plates—small details matter.
If you’re lucky enough to have a fireplace, treat it like the focal point it is. Whether it’s brick, tile, or wood, painting your fireplace can make a huge difference to how the room feels.
Stick to paints that are heat-resistant and suitable for fireplaces, and think about the atmosphere you want to create. A dark, moody shade can feel dramatic and cocooning, while a soft neutral can make the room feel light and modern.
Painting the fireplace is one of those easy DIY ideas for home that feels bold but is surprisingly quick to do.
Switch Things Up with Designer Light Switches
Light switches are one of the most overlooked elements in interior design—and yet we touch them every single day. They’re like punctuation marks in a room, quietly doing their job, often unnoticed. But what if they could be more than just functional? What if they could be beautiful too?
This is where designer switches come in. Gone are the days of basic plastic toggles—today’s light switches are tactile, stylish, and beautifully engineered. Think matte black dimmers with knurled finishes, brushed brass rockers that feel weighty in the hand, or sleek, sculptural plates that sit like jewellery on the wall.
Swapping out old, discoloured switches for something more intentional is one of those easy DIY home decor projects that makes an unexpectedly big impact. It’s a subtle but powerful detail that instantly elevates a room. Whether you prefer a minimalist vibe or something with bold contrast, there’s a finish and style to suit every interior.
And if you really want to dial up the luxe factor, opt for a coordinated set of switches, sockets, and dimmers throughout your home—it’s like a well-curated outfit for your walls.
Raise Your Curtain Game
Clarke & Clarke Congo Velvet Amber Curtains from Blinds2Go
One of the simplest ways to create the illusion of height and elegance is by adjusting your curtain rods. Instead of hanging them just above the window frame, raise them to just below the ceiling and use full-length curtains to draw the eye upward.
This easy DIY project for the home can make ceilings feel taller and rooms feel more luxurious—without spending a fortune. You might need to let out a hem or invest in longer curtains, but the impact is worth it.
With these easy DIY home projects, you can begin to update your home today. All it takes is a bit of time, effort and budget, and you will have an appealing home to enjoy. Incorporate statement mirrors, paint, and new hardware to add personality and charm one room at a time.
Sarah writes about all things shopping for Apartment Therapy, The Kitchn, and Cubby helping you find the best deals and the best products for you and your home. A Brooklyn-born Jersey Girl, she loves a good playlist, a good bagel, and her family (but not necessarily in that order).
Savannah is Assistant Editor for the Home Team at Apartment Therapy. When she’s not writing about style tips, product launches, or interviewing designers, you can catch her re-watching Gossip Girl or on Facetime with her grandma. Savannah is a proud HBCU graduate and Clark Atlanta University alumna who believes there’s nothing good food can’t fix.
Natural light floods a plywood dining nook from two roof windows in the Vault House by Bradley Van Der Straeten Architects
I was approached by Pinterest a few weeks ago asking me if I would like to host my own show on Pinterest TV. Um, yes! Yes I would! And then it became a whole series. It took me all of a micro second to work out what topic I wanted to share in my series. Biophilic design of course as it is something I am so passionate about.
Natural light floods a plywood dining nook and kitchen from two roof windows in the Vault House by Bradley Van Der Straeten Architects
Lighting is such an integral part of our interiors and it is not easy to get right. In the past few centuries, humans have become predominantly urban dwellers. This shift from countryside to city environment has caused a persistent disconnect from nature. It is projected that by 2050, 68% of the developed world will be urbanised, and increasingly distanced from nature and natural systems.
There is also a direct correlation between the increasing urbanisation of our society and rising stress rates. In fact, stress has been called the “health epidemic of the 21st century” by the World Health Organisation.
Spending 90% of our time indoors is a lot of time in artificial lighting which really isn’t good for our health. Artificial light has a very disruptive effect in our circadian rhythms. We need to spend time outside in natural light so that our bodies can function as they were intended to. Natural light helps to regulate our circadian rhythms and co-ordinate our mental and physical systems.
If our circadian rhythms are disrupted by too much exposure to artificial light, particularly at night time, it can lead to disregulated nervous systems and health issues such as increased stress, emotional distress, mood disorders, depression, memory problems, general poor performance, disrupted sleep patterns and even critical illnesses such as obesity, heart problems and breast cancer.
However, when it comes to lighting our homes, if we take our queue from nature, we can’t go far wrong.
Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.
Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator
Lighting is an integral element of biophilic design and there are a number of ways that we can work with lighting to harness the powers of biophilic design. This is what is so wonderful about biophilic design, it is a really holistic approach to design and many of the associated principles overlap.
Bringing in More Natural Light
The most obvious way to bring nature indoors when it comes to lighting is to bring more natural light into your home. This is much easier said than done unless you are building your own home from scratch and you can design the home to really maximise the amount of natural light that comes in.
If you are designing your home from scratch you can make sure you plan in many more windows and doors. Flooding the space with natural light allows our bodies to work according to the natural rhythms of the day and night cycle.
Making windows and doors as large as possible and placing them strategically to ensure that light can enter the home at all times of day will bring maximum benefits. Having dual aspect rooms with windows on adjacent walls that provide views in more than one direction are better than having windows in just one wall.
It can also help to change out any solid internal doors for ones that are glazed instead. This will allow light to pass from one room to another. If privacy is a concern, for example bedroom and bathroom doors, you can get doors that have reeded or fluted glass.
The view through glass doors to the kitchen, dining room and garden beyond in the refurbishment of a North London terraced house by Cairn Architects | Photography by Peter Landers and Anna Stathaki
Add External Glazed Walls
Natural light floods this extension and refurbishment of a North London terraced house by Cairn Architects | Photography by Peter Landers and Anna Stathaki
If you are building from scratch, adding glazed external walls is a great way to ensure that natural light can enter your home more easily. But this can also apply to home renovations.
If you are planning an extension to your home, using glazed walls to create a glass box effect will allow the natural light to stream in unimpeded.
A glass extension to the rear of a Grade II listed property by London Contemporary | Photography by Paul Craig
You can also help the natural light to move through your home more easily by replacing internal walls with glass partitions. You will still get the same sense of zoning your home and break up the space, but you won’t prevent the light from moving through the space.
Natural light floods the kitchen of a North London terraced house by Cairn Architects | Photography by Peter Landers and Anna Stathaki
Small internal windows can also help the natural light pass from one room to another and can help to illuminate any particularly dark rooms or spaces.
The internal window in the home office allows natural light to move through this North London terraced house by Cairn Architects | Photography by Peter Landers and Anna Stathaki
Add Roof Lights to Increase Natural Light
Natural light floods a plywood dining nook and kitchen from two roof windows in the Vault House by Bradley Van Der Straeten Architects
Roof lights are another great way to get extra daylight into your home. Whether you use them instead of adding extra doors and windows or as well as, you can really make the most of how much light is entering your home.
You can add roof lights if you have a pitched roof but you can also add them to flat roofs. There are plenty of companies now that also offer bespoke sizes so you can make them work in your home no matter what restrictions you are dealing with.
Velux also do terrace windows and cabrio windows which allow you to create a small balcony on your roof. I discovered these while thinking about how I would like to convert my loft and maximise the natural light in the space.
Sun tunnels are another great solution for pitched or flat roofs as they allow you to experience the changing light of the seasons and times of day. They can be used to bring extra light into any room in the house as long as the ceiling of that room is not too far from the roof.
It’s not just sunlight that can be brought in with a sun tunnel either. They allow you to experience changes in weather, passing clouds and even moonlight.
If natural light isn’t abundant in your home, one thing you can do to multiply it is to add mirrors. Mirrors help to reflect the light that is coming in and bounce it around the room creating the illusion of more natural light. Place mirrors opposite and adjacent to any windows for maximum benefit.
If you can’t add more windows to your home, adding mirrors that look like windows is a good alternative, particularly if they can reflect views of outdoors.
Bring in Dynamic and Diffuse Light
The principle of biophilic design that refers to lighting is all about dynamic and diffuse light. This means that it is important to incorporate varying intensities of light and shadow that change over time and mimic the lighting conditions that we might experience out in nature.
A space that has good dynamic & diffuse light conditions allows us to experience the time and movement through the light. Think of the dappled light under a canopy of trees, or the reflections of rippling water on a wall. These patterns are what we call fractals, and our brain is programmed to look for these fractals so incorporatingthem into our homes is beneficial.
Add Soft, Flowy Curtains or Drapes to Soften Natural Light
Diffuse light is when light has been dispersed and scattered evenly across a surface and has been softened slightly to reduce the glare. This effect can be seen in nature when sun light is refracted by cloud cover, fog or a forest.
We can achieve this in our homes by using soft, flowy curtains or drapes to soften any harsh sunlight that comes into our homes. This is particularly useful if you do have large expanses of glazing that may cause stron direct light to enter your home.
Choose Lights That Create Shadows Inspired by Nature
BE Water Lamp from the WAW Collection designed by Fernando Correa
If you cannot create dynamic and diffuse light conditions naturally, you can always experiment with biomimicry and use lighting products that are modelled on this biological process. Lights that create shadows that look like a tree canopy or light relfected off water for example can add a sense of movement to the space which holds our attention and intrigue us.
Window film is a great way to create more shadows in your home and to mimic the effect of dappled light. When sunlight comes pouring in through the windows, doors or glazed walls, a window film can help to turn this light into something that more ressembles the light and shadows that we might experience outside.
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Opt for window films that depict nature for maximum effect. The shadows that the window film casts should move and change throughout the day as the sun moves through the sky and enters your home from different angles.
Choose Lights That Mimic the Changing Time of Day
Throughout the day, the colour of sunlight changes and our bodies respond to this. Light is yellow in the morning, blue at midday, and red in the afternoon and evening. Blue light causes our bodies to release serotonin which gives us more energy and helps us to feel alert. As blue light fades into the evening and we see more red light, our body produces melatonin insted which helps us to feel calmer and prepare for sleep.
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If we are spending a lot of time indoors it helps if we can mimic the changing colour of the light throughout the day. There are lamps and lights that you can buy that work on this principle such as wake-up light alarm clocks.
The final way that you can can harness the power of light in your home is less about the lighting system itself and more about the decorative appearance of the light fittings. Choosing lights that feature organic shapes and materials that can be found in nature has many benefits.
Look for lights and lamps that either incorporate foliage or are symbolic representations of life and make us think of living things. Choose products that are contoured, patterned, textured or feature the numerical arrangements that we can find in nature.
If you are interested in learning more about how to incorporate the principles of biophilic design into your own home, you may be interested in reading these posts.
Apartment Therapy received compensation for this post, which was written and edited independently by our editorial team.
In case you haven’t noticed, rattan is having a real renaissance (a rattanaissance, if you will). The woven look (also seen in cane and wicker) is quickly taking over our homes, whether it’s with a chic pendant light, a cozy chair to curl up in, or a chic headboard to help complete your bedding setup. We’ve noticed some gorgeous rattan mirrors lately and absolutely love the look — it’s the perfect way to incorporate rattan into your home without committing to a larger piece. And with the trend exploding, your picks (and places to source your mirrors) are bigger than you might have anticipated. To help make your hunt a little easier, we went ahead and rounded up some of our favorite finds that’ll instantly add some natural texture and bohemian flair to your space. Below, check out 10 of the best rattan mirrors around and pick one up today!
