How to Do a Renovation Without Going Over Budget

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

Lyudmila Danilevich is an interior designer and founder of L.Danilevich Interior Design studio

Creating a Budget

Create an Excel table with a list of all materials and works that will be carried out. Enter any items related to expenses — even delivery and moving goods upstairs. Often such details significantly increase the budget.

Create two columns: planned and actual expenses. Usually, several months pass between planning and implementation, and the cost of materials and services can change.

This way you will be able to see in which items the budget was exceeded. Decide where it's better to save on other aspects, which helps maintain a balance in expenses. Don't forget about decor and textiles — usually around 10% of the budget goes to them.

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

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

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

Where you cannot save money

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 reworking later.

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

With construction workers

Good builders cannot be too cheap. You can save and hire inexperienced craftsmen, but then you'll have to redo everything for them. In the end, you will spend twice as much.

Moreover, experienced and proven builders can work even with inexpensive materials. And in that case, you will never notice the difference between budget tile and expensive imported one.

With materials

If you have already paid for the work of experienced builders, you can afford to save on finishing materials. For example, choose budget tiles for bathroom walls. For small areas like floors, accent walls, or kitchen backsplashes, you can use more expensive and beautiful materials.

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

With interior decoration

It's better to save on finishing works and invest in interior decor. In the future, when moving, you can always take furniture and decor with you (which is not true for perfectly flat walls and floors).

Where you can save money

On certain construction works

Most of the budget goes into wall construction and finishing, as well as preparation for painting and wallpapering. Try to be clever: instead of building walls from foam blocks, plastering, and laying tile as brick, build a partition from natural brick and paint it. No need for preliminary plastering or spackling.

Walls can also be easily built from ceramic or foam blocks. They can be painted or coated with varnish on top.

Design: Bobo.space

Reduce costs on plastering and don't level walls by using guide rails and 90-degree angles. These measures are only needed in places where you plan to install built-in furniture. You can also skip the spackling stage and paint 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 exposed and simply coated with varnish. 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. You don't even need to cover them with gypsum board.

Design: Bogdan Ciocodeica and Diana Rosu

You don't have to buy expensive floorboards — they can be replaced with larch boards. Such boards are often used on dachas and also fit well in apartments. Moreover, the boards come unprocessed, so you can choose the varnish or oil yourself and color them to your desired shade.

In Europe, plywood floors are often used — they also look great in interiors since this material has a beautiful pattern. It is easy to coat them with varnish. Another option: paint the screed — you can hide a warm floor in it.

Design: Tatiana Bezverkha

On ceiling cornices

You can completely do without it or use a foam plastic version. However, such cornice should not be placed on walls — it is soft and can deform. But under the ceiling, nothing will happen to it — after painting, it is hard to distinguish from a polyurethane cornice.

On stylistics

An interior in classical style will cost you much more than modern or Scandinavian — it requires more complex forms and decorative details. The simpler the style, the lower the costs.

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

Design: Maklarhuset

On custom furniture

Look for small woodworking workshops — they charge less for the work. Compare prices in three to four workshops in advance — they can differ significantly.

On wardrobes

During the planning stage, instead of standalone wardrobes, allocate space for built-in wardrobes. To save the budget, use IKEA PAX storage systems. The fronts can be replaced with curtains (by the way, room partitions in interiors are also an option).

Important: if you plan to use ready-made solutions, the size of the wardrobe should be designed for them from the start.

Design: Erin Kestenbaum

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