Keeping your home beautiful and comfortable at the same time isn’t always easy. The changes you can make for beauty may cost you in comfort and vice versa. It can be a truly frustrating situation.
Fortunately, there are some simple things you can do that will not just make your home warmer but also make it more beautiful. These five ideas will give you a boost on matching beauty with comfort.
Install Efficient Window Treatments
The best heat is free heat, and the sun offers plenty of that in even the coldest months. Your job is to capture that energy efficiently, and the main tool for achieving that is your window treatments. Blackout blinds are great in the summer, but they need to be left open or rotated out with lighter models in the winter. The right choice in blinds will look great while allowing warm sunlight inside.
Start at the Top
Your home’s roof provides both beauty and warmth. A new roof looks great and, in a dark color, absorbs heat that helps keep the attic warmer. A roof that is aging will not only provide a smaller boost but will also look old and rough. If your roof is showing its age, contact a roofing company to find out how an upgrade can give your home a boost in beauty and warmth.
Add Electric Fireplaces
A traditional wood-burning fireplace is not very efficient because it creates drafts around windows and doors. Electric fireplaces provide all the beauty of a traditional unit with the airtight performance of an electric space heater. They can be used in your cooler rooms to correct unequal temperatures from your central heat.
Change Landscaping
Trees are a great investment in your home’s beauty. They can also ease cooling costs in the summer. Of course, the flip side of that is that they increase heating costs in the winter by robbing the home of free sunlight. The solution is to consider the sun’s changing angle through the year and place trees so that they cast a shadow on the home during the summer but not the winter.
Upgrade Windows and Doors
Walls are typically well-insulated and energy-efficient. The energy loss takes place in windows and doors. If the windows and doors in your home are old or in bad condition, they’re probably letting a lot more heat out of your home than you have to. Replacing them with new, energy-efficient models will not only look better, they will also be warmer.
There are some dilemmas that are tough to resolve, but striking a balance between beauty and warmth in your home isn’t one of them. These simple changes can go a long way toward the best solution for you.
Author Bio
Lizzie Weakley is a freelance writer from Columbus, Ohio. In her free time, she enjoys the outdoors and walks in the park with her three-year-old husky, Snowball.