What I Mean When I Talk About Renovation Success.

When people talk about a “successful renovation”, they’re usually talking about the end result.

Did it look good?
Did the kitchen photograph well?
Did the house gain value?

And of course, those things matter. I care deeply about good design and well-considered homes. But over time, through renovating my own properties and working with many different clients, I’ve come to realise that renovation success is never just about how things look at the end.

Because you can finish with a beautiful house and still feel utterly drained by the experience of getting there. You might have spent more money than you ever intended, given up months (or years) of your time, and arrived at the end emotionally exhausted. And when that happens, it’s very hard to enjoy what you’ve created in the same way.

There’s also another feeling I see often. When a house looks fine on paper, but doesn’t quite feel right in real life. You can’t always put your finger on why, but you feel it. Something is slightly off. And that feeling matters. Ultimate renovation success isn’t just about what you can explain or justify. It’s about how the house feels to live in, day after day.

For a long time, I struggled to explain why some renovations felt genuinely satisfying and others, even technically “good” ones, felt somehow compromised. Eventually, I realised it wasn’t one thing that made the difference. It was a combination.

I began to think of renovation success as resting on four connected pillars. Not a rigid system, but a way of making sense of what really matters - both in the outcome, and in the experience along the way.

Two of those pillars are about what you end up with. The other two are about what it costs you - in money, time and emotional energy - to get there.

The first pillar is Creative Space.

Creative Space is the foundation of a renovation. It’s how rooms relate to each other, how you move through the house, how light enters, and how the layout supports the way you actually live. Sometimes that involves extending or converting, but just as often it’s about rethinking what’s already there - removing walls, adjusting proportions, improving flow.

This is the area where many people quite rightly seek professional help. Spatial design is not easy to do well, and it’s not something most people can comfortably tackle on their own. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: not all professional designs are good ones.

I’ve had many clients come to me with very expensive architectural plans that simply don’t work. Layouts that look impressive but feel awkward, unbalanced, or disconnected from how the household actually lives. In some cases, I’ve been genuinely shocked by how much money has been spent on drawings that need significant reworking to function properly.

When space is right, a house tends to feel calm and intuitive. When it isn’t, no amount of beautiful finishes can fully fix that underlying sense that something is off. And because spatial decisions are so difficult to change later, this pillar carries a lot of weight.

The second pillar is Inspired Interiors.

This refers to the permanent layer of the interior. The things that stay put once the furniture and cushions are stripped away. Floors, tiles, doors, handles, lighting, joinery. These decisions quietly shape how a home feels every single day, yet they’re often made in a fragmented way, one showroom at a time.

I’ve seen many projects where the space was thoughtfully designed, but the interior layer hadn’t been considered as a whole. The result is rarely disastrous, but it is often disappointing. A sense that the house doesn’t quite come together, or doesn’t support the feeling the space itself promises.

For a renovation to feel resolved, the spatial design and the interior layer need to support one another. And ideally, the house should feel cohesive - not identical everywhere, but connected. That can be surprisingly hard to achieve without a clear way of thinking about the house as a whole.

Those first two pillars are about the finished home. But the next two are about the experience of getting there.

The third pillar is Purposeful Process.

Renovation always involves decisions, changes and moments of uncertainty. What makes the difference is how those moments are handled. Who you’re working with. How issues are resolved. Whether the site feels calm or charged.

I’ve been on building sites where the atmosphere was so tense I’ve had to physically step in between tradesmen to stop a fist fight. That’s an extreme example - but it speaks to something important. When process breaks down, stress spreads quickly. Decisions become reactive. Trust erodes. And the emotional toll on everyone involved escalates fast.

A good process doesn’t eliminate challenges. Renovation is never completely smooth. But it does give you a way through them. It creates clarity, accountability and a sense that things are being held, even when they’re difficult.

The fourth pillar is Respected Resources.

We tend to think about renovation resources in terms of money and time, but emotional energy is just as real - and often the first thing to run out. Renovation draws on all three, and different people have different capacities at different points in their lives.

I’ve seen projects that looked efficient on paper but carried a huge emotional cost. And I’ve seen people run out of energy halfway through and start making decisions from a place of exhaustion rather than intention. That’s not a failure - it’s human. But it does affect outcomes.

For me, renovation success means respecting all of these resources, not just the financial ones.

Without any one of these four pillars, something is compromised. The house might look good but feel wrong. The process might run smoothly but the outcome disappoints. Or the project might achieve its design goals, but at too great a personal cost.

This way of thinking has helped me make sense of why some renovations feel deeply satisfying and why others don’t. It’s also shaped how I now support people: not by trying to do everything for them, but by helping in the places that matter most, at the moments when it makes the biggest difference.

In the next post, I’ll share one small but important way this thinking shows up in my design work - through what I think of as the ‘moments’ that bring a home to life.