Live a greener lifestyle at home

When thinking about re-modelling or renovating your home, perhaps you are thinking about your environmental impact on the world and would like this to reflect in your home, living a more sustainable life. There are many ways you can introduce this into your home.

If changing the structure of your home, there are many energy efficient or producing products that could be built into the structure. You can produce your own energy with the use of solar panels, wind turbines, or just help make the use of energy in your home, as efficient as possible for the way that you live.

You can start off by introducing a thicker, more effective insulation into the build and the roof space to reduce the amount of heating you will require. Reflective enhancers are available to put behind radiators to prevent heat loss through the walls. Geothermal heating can be introduced, which is a renewable energy, collected by ground source heat pumps, in the grounds of your property.

When planning the build, ensure that your windows are facing in the right direction to allow for maximum natural light and heat into your home, and of course the correct windows must be chosen to keep in as much heat energy as possible!

There are many re-claimed products you can choose for the build, whether its bricks, roof tiles, wood and much, much more! There are specialists who can help you with this, in your planning.

Try and choose local suppliers, where possible, rather than those that need to be delivered to you across country, reducing the effect of the environment, that shipping could cause!

When choosing lighting, choose LED lights over halogens, these use less energy and last a lot longer than halogens.

The kitchen is a great place to introduce a greener lifestyle. Choose recycled worktops, in the form of glass, quartz, or use reclaimed wood, where you can. There are many options to choose from and many suppliers, so there is something for everyone, when it comes to colour and finish.

I recommend installing a filtered water tap into your kitchen, billions of litres of bottled water are consumed globally every year, imagine how much bottled waste that generates! In addition to the damaging effects that transporting these bottles must make on the environment. Drink directly from a filtered tap to reduce this waste and impact.

Would you believe, the average household throws away an average cost of £50 of food waste every month! You wouldn’t throw a £50 note away each month, would you? Many appliance manufacturers now have zones within their cooling products, which are suitable are long term storage of food. Your fresh foods can last 3 times as long, reducing some of this waste. I have one in my home and wouldn’t live without it now!

When choosing the remainder of your kitchen appliances, ensure that they are energy star certified.

As I touched on in my last blog, the bathroom is a great place to save on the environmental impact of your home. Many shower heads and taps will have flow restrictors built into them which will still give a good amount of water for function, yet not waste any. Even further than this, some products will also feature eco functions, to save additional water. An astounding 30% of water used in the home, is for the toilet. Cisterns are a lot smaller than they use to be, we usually see products with two flushing functions so you can choose a larger or smaller flush. Using either 3 and 6 litre flushes, or 4 and 2.6 litre flushes. Even further to this, you can harvest rainwater to use in your cistern. Although, the initial costs of setting this up and the space for a storage tank outside need to be considered, you can reduce your water footprint, reducing your water consumption of that 30%, or more, if you also use it to wash your clothes too.

Upcycling! This is a great way to reduce your environmental impact! Upcycling is transforming old products or waste materials into alternative or re-newed products which can be used around the home. This could be really fun, getting involved with the upcycling yourself and thinking up new and creative ways to use waste products. There is a huge upcycling community, who you can help with ideas, or provide you with upcycled products themselves.

Another huge market within the home industry is Vintage, some of which, has been upcycled for a new, fresh finish or you can purchase items in their original state.

The most important, is LOVE what you do and build to last! Make sure the craftsmanship survives time and hardship and if you love what you have created in your home, you are less likely to want to change it again in the near future.

There are so many ways to reduce your footprint, when re-designing your home, I hope these gives you just a few ideas of where you can start!

RIOR Design House has a fully comprehensive Interior design service available to you, we can help you introduce these aspects into your home projects, and put you in touch with the right specialists when required. We can project manage your project from concept to completion, helping all the elements of your greener home, come together with ease. Please visit our website and hit the contacts page.