How to Do a Renovation Without Going Over Budget?

We asked designer Lyudmila Danilevich to share her experience and explain how to stay within budget during apartment renovation. The article includes many important tips — make a note of them.

Lyudmila Danilevich, Designer. Founder of L.Danilevich Interior Design Studio

Creating a Budget

Create a table in Excel with a list of all products and works to be done. Include any cost-related items — even delivery and moving goods to the floor. These small details often significantly increase the budget.

Create two columns: planned and actual expenses. Usually, several months pass between planning and execution, and material and service costs can change.

This way you will see where expenses significantly exceeded the budget. Decide where it's better to save in other areas — this helps maintain a balance of costs. Don't forget about decor and textiles — usually, around 10% of the budget goes to these items.

If you don't want to wait for price increases, it's possible to buy some materials and plumbing in advance. Of course, this is only if you have a space to store them. It's important to leave free space on the site so that builders can work calmly and avoid accidentally damaging anything.

Where is renovation cheaper: in a new apartment or secondary market?

Renovation in a new building is always cheaper. For work in a secondary market, builders charge more for demolition, window replacement, waste removal, replacing heating risers, and all engineering communications.

Where you can't save

Planning

Before starting the renovation, plan and create a detailed layout of the apartment with furniture placement. Mark all outlets, switches, and light fixtures to avoid extra costs for rework.

If you can't do it yourself, order a ready-made plan from a designer — professionals often offer this as a separate service.

Work of Builders

Good builders can't be too cheap. You can save and hire inexperienced masters, but later you'll have to redo everything for them. In the end, you’ll spend twice as much.

Moreover, experienced and proven builders can work even with inexpensive materials. And you’ll never notice the difference between budget tiles and expensive imported ones.

Materials

If you've already paid for the work of experienced builders, you can save on finishing materials. For example, use budget tiles for bathroom wall finishing. For small areas like floors, accent walls, or kitchen backsplashes, use more expensive and attractive materials.

The same applies to wallpapers: you can use budget materials for all walls in the room, and for accent areas — roll of expensive wallpapers you dreamed about.

Interior Filling

It's better to save on finishing work and invest in interior filling. In the future, when you move, you'll always be able to take furniture and decor with you (which you can't say about perfectly flat walls and floors).

Where you can save

On Certain Construction Works

A large part of the budget goes to wall construction and finishing, as well as preparation for painting and wallpapering. Try to save: instead of building walls from foam blocks, plastering, and laying brick tiles, build a partition from natural brick and paint it. No need for preliminary plastering or spackling.

Walls are also easy to build from ceramic or foam blocks. These can be painted or coated with varnish on top.

Design: Bobo.space

Reduce costs on plastering and don't level walls with guides and 90-degree angles. These measures are only needed in areas where you will install built-in furniture. You can also skip the spackling stage and paint the walls directly.

On Floor and Ceiling Finishing

Pay attention to the ceiling slabs in new buildings — they have a beautiful concrete texture that can be left visible and simply coated with varnish. And open wiring is also a stylish solution for modern interiors.

If this option doesn't suit you, the slabs can be painted without prior leveling. And even without gypsum board.

Design: Bogdan Ciocodeica and Diana Rosu

It's not necessary to buy expensive floorboards — they can be replaced with larch boards. These are often used on dachas, and also suitable for apartments. Moreover, the boards come unprocessed, so you can choose the varnish or oil yourself and color them to the desired shade.

In Europe, plywood floors are often used — they also look great in interiors because of the beautiful pattern. They can be easily coated with varnish. Another option: paint the screed — you can hide a warm floor in it.

Design: Tatiana Bezhertseva

On Ceiling Cornices

You can completely do without it or use a foam variant. However, this cornice shouldn't be placed on walls — it's soft and may deform. But under the ceiling, nothing will happen to it — after painting, it's hard to distinguish from a polyurethane cornice.

On Stylistic Approach

An interior in a classic style will cost you much more than modern or Scandinavian — more complex forms and decorative details are needed. The simpler the style, the lower the costs.

If this option doesn't suit you, save on finishing and fill the interior with more expensive classical furniture.

Design: Maklarhuset

On Custom Furniture

Look for small carpentry workshops — they charge less for the work. Check and compare prices in three to four workshops in advance — they can differ significantly.

On Wardrobes

During the design phase, instead of standalone wardrobes, allocate space for walk-in closets. To save on the budget, use IKEA PAX storage systems. The doors can be replaced with curtains (by the way, interior partitions also work).

Important: if you plan to use ready-made solutions, design the walk-in closet size according to them.

Design: Erin Kestenbaum

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