Your garage is often one of the most neglected rooms of your house, either used purely for the car or more often as a general storeroom for family junk, tools, bikes, spare washing machines and all of the garden furniture. But it doesn’t have to be like that – with a little imagination and a bit of decoration you can turn your garage into a useful extension to your home.
It could become the perfect in-between room from the garden to your home, to help keep your house floors clean and tidy! Why not decorate the garage as a practical “clean room,” with lots of floor mats for wiping muddy shoes, storage areas for removing wellies before entering the house, and even a corner specifically for cleaning down a muddy dog. With this décor scheme, your garage becomes incredibly useful and helps to reduce the amount of house cleaning you need to do.
If you use the garage primarily for storage then don’t have it looking like a junkyard – a few decorative but useful storage solutions could make all the difference. Garages have high ceilings generally enabling you to store items up and out of the way if you don’t use them very often.
Look for hooks to hang things on the walls, tall storage cabinets for tools, nice stackable plastic boxes, and drawer sets. The garage doesn’t have to be a dingy hole full of stuff gathering dust but can be decorated with useful storage features to make it an organized space.
Decorate the garage to become a useful office space – why not paint the walls in vibrant colors and set the space up to be a proper office with desk space, storage for filing, and a workstation for printers and computers. There is plenty of room in a garage to have all the room you need, with wall space for vision and idea boards, calendars and planners so with some creative décor your tired old garage could be your perfect workspace.
If you want to be more creative, then you can decorate your garage to become a creative craft space. With all that room and some innovative storage ideas, you can decorate it to become the perfect art and craft studio. Look at bright colors and smart storage, perhaps with a big wooden table in the middle to ensure you have space for all of those art projects.
Alternatively, why not decorate the garage in the style of a bar lounge area to turn it into a relaxing games room. Use inspiration from an old pub, with beer mats and old advertising material, install a jukebox and a pool table, and your garage is transformed into a games room. You could even go the whole hog and install a bar in one corner.
Another fairly traditional use of the garage space is a utility room, where you store the washing machine, freezer and tumble dryer. But rather than having them stacked in a dingy corner, make the garage an extension of your kitchen by following through with the same décor scheme. You could install worktops in the same style, to add extra space and help with folding the washing, making the room really useful and not just an afterthought.
Even if you use your garage to store your car, it needn’t be a dirty, neglected space. Why not decorate the garage with bright colors, and have storage space to keep all of those useful spare car parts and car maintenance tools you have lying around. You could even go all out and decorate your garage interior to match your car, although you might need to update it if you buy a new car of course!
Whatever you use your garage for, a clean-up, lick of paint and smart storage solutions can make it a handy space which will add value and purpose to your house. It’s far better than having it become the dreaded room which no-one goes in and always has the garage door shut to avoid looking at and facing the mess and dirt inside.
Garages can be decorated in a million different ways from craft rooms, spare bedrooms, man caves, clean rooms, or useful utility rooms, as well as being used for the more traditional car storage area. Whatever you use your garage for; keep it decorated and organized to reflect the rest of the house, and it will add value, impress the neighbors and become a pleasure to use rather than a dread to be tackled someday.