How to renovate your living room for £15,000 (or under)

Zopa’s hassle-free loans (Representative APR 17%) have helped 100,000s people do up their homes. But while we make managing your money feel good, we’ll leave it to the experts to show you how to spend it to make your home look good. That’s why we challenged Athina and Amy from Topology to show us how they’drenovate a living room, with a budget of up to £15,000.  So from knocking down walls, to furniture and the finishing touches, here’s what they’d do

With a £15k budget for a living room renovation, you’ll have a lot of flexibility with what you can do. Whether it’s laying down all new flooring and paint schemes, installing Crittall doors or even knocking down walls to make a room bigger – £15k will allow you to do this! So in this Pinterest board, we’ve added some examples of the kind of results you can expect to achieve. 

Start with anything structural: budget £3,00 – £7,000

We particularly love the idea of knocking down a wall joining two rooms to make one bigger, unified space, and then installing glass Crittall style doors to create a contemporary space whilst also maximising light. Not only is this look stunning but creating something like this in your own home will add value – it’s a win win! 

TOP TIP: Try buying Crittal doors on Ebay if you want to save a penny or two. They’re much cheaper second hand and can save you thousands.

New floor: budget  £1,000 – £5,000

New flooring in a living room space is also key and can be achieved with a £15k budget. As much as we love carpet, wooden flooring is much more practical in terms of low maintenance cleaning and makes a space more versatile when it comes to adding layers with rugs. Try a herringbone pattern which will add a modern twist on an old classic and suits any style of property. 

Top Tip: Laying Herringbone patterned flooring will cost you more due to the amount of labour time required to put the pattern down. Make sure when you are in the planning stages of a design you get your contractor to quote for this type of pattern in advance to avoid any hidden costs down the line.

Radiators: budget £1,000

Next up you’ll see we’ve pinned plenty of cast iron radiators. These guys are a real game changer when it comes to on trend interiors and can take the dullest of corners into a sleek, contemporary space. What’s more, you can get them in all shapes and colours and they’re easy to install – however, don’t be fooled, they’re heavier than they look! 

Accessorise your walls: budget £1,000

Next up, you’ll see we’ve pinned some amazing gallery walls. Adding artwork to your space is the key to polishing off any design. We particularly love grouping posters & prints in mis-matching frames to create a unique and dynamic feature. 

Top Tip: Get a newspaper and cut out your frame sizes and put them up on the wall with non-damaging sticky tape so you can plan your gallery wall layout. Or alternatively, lay all your frames on the floor first and play around with combinations until happy!

Furniture: budget £7,000

Lastly, and arguably the most important…your furniture! This is where most of your money is spent. And easily too! Think about what key items you’ll need e.g. sofa, coffee table, media unit and work around them to build up your overall scheme. We love using velvet sofas as they add a great opportunity to mix textures such as combining velvet with linen, cotton, wood, jute, rattan etc. On our Pinterest board you’ll see some great examples of these and ways in which you can combine them in all sorts of design styles.

Topology is an award winning interior design studio based in London centred around affordability, set up by our founder Athina Bluff in 2016. On a mission to show that great style doesn’t have to come at a cost, Topology’s ethos is all centred around good design at affordable prices.

Are you ready to get started? See your home improvement loan rate in just 3 minutes. You can apply online, with no fiddly paperwork and your loan is easy to manage on the Zopa app. Representative APR 17%. https://www.zopa.com/loans/home-improvement