Give outdated design a fresh twist

If your home was built before the aughts, chances are you contend with some older architectural designs that may be a little frustrating to modernize. If removing old entertainment niches, clunky chimneys or dated kitchen cabinets isn’t in the budget, there are still plenty of ways to freshen up these parts of your home without major surgery.

Three design pros weigh in with ideas for how to give old design a fresh twist:

Low-lying fruit

To start, try not to solely focus on the outdated design piece. Let your eyes wander through the entire room or space, says Dan Mazzarini, principal and creative director for BHDM Design, in New York.

“Looking at one piece in isolation probably isn’t the solution,” he adds. “I think it’s … biting these projects off in smaller bites. … One of the cheapest tricks with high impact is painting walls and reimagining furniture like tables and side tables.”

Fresh paint for the entire room or adding an accent wall can divert attention from outdated design. You can also repaint furniture. Old oak chairs and tables can get a fresh lease on life in white or another color. You can also update couches and sofas with slipcovers and add accent pillows. If cabinets need a refresh, start with swapping out curvy handles for modern ones, and you can also add a throw rug or change out decorative lighting for a big impact with minimal spend in a living room.

“I’m a real advocate for doing some things yourself,” Mazzarini says. “Creativity, a little elbow grease and imagination are the keys to success whether you’re redoing fabric on a dining room chair with a staple gun or simply buying some new picture frames, it doesn’t need to be a total overhaul to dramatically improve the impression of the room.”

Working with old fireplaces, niches, pot shelves

Anna Rosemann, a Los Angeles-based interior designer, says that working with old pot shelves, commonly found in ’90s homes, comes down to how you use them. Modern vases versus older round pots can make all the difference.

“I really don’t mind pot shelves at all. If you accessorize a bit more modern, you can take the ’90s right out of them,” she explains.

Rosemann works with her share of old brick fireplaces, too. In some cases, she likes to re-envision them with a coat of paint.

“You can paint them white or beige, it’s something people don’t think about, but you can absolutely transform it,” she says.

Molly Valdez, an interior designer and owner of Molly Valdez Studio in Las Vegas, says some older fireplaces have curved features that make them look outdated. They can benefit from creating a straight-line border around them. She likes to use stone or slate tile, if possible.

She also will use floating shelves around fireplaces to display keepsakes, photos and books; these touches give the eyes reasons to drift away from the fireplace.

In many ’90s homes, niches were all the rage, too. They weren’t just entertainment centers. You found them under staircases and built into walls in many areas of the home.

Valdez loves to reimagine these spaces with a functional and decorative eye. Sometimes she will add modern cabinets, but her favorite thing to do is to reconfigure them as wet bars with a small refrigerator and sink.

“I’ve seen small ones with an 18-inch fridge on one side and 18-inch cabinetry next to it with a sink and room for storage underneath. It doesn’t just need to be a wet bar. It can be a coffee bar; in the summer, the kids are home and you can make it a smoothie bar,” she adds.

In some cases, she also leaves the original niche intact and just adds wallpaper, tiles or wood cladding to display art and photos. And if you need storage space, modern cabinets can be built into niche spaces, the design pro adds.

Using color to hide

You can also use color to hide some architectural elements. If, for example, you choose to repaint cabinets or a fireplace with the goal of making it stand out less, paint it a light color, similar to the wall color.

“You want it to recede and blend in,” Mazzarini explains.

The same thinking can serve furniture and flooring. Using a concept called tone on tone, with light flooring, say a muted gray, you can go with a slightly darker gray seagrass rug and a light-colored couch and sofa, Rosemann emphasizes. This will give the room a more open, airy feel so you don’t focus on one outdated detail as much.

“I always say big pieces should be a little more muted in color. You don’t want the couch to be green, use green accent pillows for that pop of color instead,” she says.

Ideas if you have a little money to work with

If there is some budget for counters, flooring or updating cabinets, these decisions can transform an older space. “Changing out outdated tile with a wood pattern ceramic or vinyl plank immediately gives a home a new feel,” Mazzarini says.

Some older homes also contend with partition walls and small half-walls that carve up space unnecessarily. Removing nonweight-bearing walls for an open floor plan can fall in the price range of new counters, Mazzarini adds, but it can open up more options to further modernize the space.

Overall, Rosemann says being in tune with how you intend to use a space and whether you want to preserve something or completely re-envision it will help to guide your decisions.

“I think you have to ask yourself what’s the goal? Do we want to keep it as close as possible to original form? Do we want to modernize it so it fits more with the current aesthetic of the house? … I think if you’re trying to honor something or reuse an old piece, you also really have to think about how far you’re willing to take it,” she adds.