How to Add Character to Your Home

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There’s one simple change you can make throughout your entire house to add character and pizzazz…can you guess what it is??

Much like putting on earrings or a necklace, switching out your home’s basic hardware adds that little bit of glimmer to your house.  We chose chrome metal pulls and knobs for our kitchen, and even though gold is so ‘in’ right now, I love the shine it gives the kitchen.  We also have switched out several of our light fixtures for more farmhouse and industrial style ones.  However, most people don’t really think about switching out doorknobs!  That’s right, our latest project was to switch out all the doorknobs in our home to these gorgeous and shiny knobs from Schlage.

I’ve been working with Schlage all year switching out various doorknobs–you can see our front door hardware swap, French doors makeover, and the Schlage Sense Smart deadbolt.  I’ve chosen the Addison trim oval knob for all these doorknobs because I love the way it looks and it adds some serious character.  I mean really, look how boring my old knobs were.

The other thing that was annoying is that when the builder put in the knobs upstairs, none of the bedrooms had locks on them.  And sometimes you just need to lock your kids in their rooms! Haha, just kidding.  (Or am I? Bwahahaha!) But seriously, when we would have guests come, it was weird that they couldn’t lock their doors for some privacy.

I was more than happy to switch them all out and I am in LOVE with the way they look.  The awesome thing about the Addison trim with oval knob is that it comes in a ton of different finishes.  While it’s tempting to get all the same finishes through the whole house, who said that’s a rule?? Who said that you have to have the exact same hardware and finishes?  Here’s my rule about mixing and matching things:

When mixing and matching a large group of objects, one element needs to be consistent throughout.  For example, if you are making a gallery wall, you could do all different kinds of frames but keep the photos all black and white.  Or do all different kinds of photos and keep all the frames white.  So for my hardware, I chose to keep all the knobs the same trim and shape but mix and match the finishes.  I have finishes in brass, matte black, chrome, and brushed nickel.

I did a chrome knob on the pantry door to match all the chrome hardware in the kitchen.  I also wanted it to pop.  And this knob is my most favorite of all of them because it is SOOOOO pretty.  It’s just so shiny!  Seriously, the photo does NOT do it justice.  It looks so small but it really is so gorgeous.

 

I kept most of the gold in one area–towards the front of the house.  So since I have gold door knobs in the entry, I put gold in the master bedroom, closet, and bathroom.  Something I love about the gold is it goes really well with colored doors.  So if I ever decide to paint this door black (which I’m really tempted to) the gold will be gorgeous and so high-end next to it.

Upstairs I kept it all matte black except for the closet doors, which I did in brass.  Each room has brass accents so I thought the closet doors could be a fun accent as well.  And of course, they have locks!  And I also did black for my basement door because it is a great neutral that is also beautiful.  I love how it goes well with my favorite lamps.

It’s super super easy to switch out the doorknobs too.  At first I struggled because I forgot you could easily pop off the doorknob so it’s out of the way.  #duh  Basically you just have to put the pieces through the hole and connect the door handles to the latch assembly.  I had to pry off the face plate on the latch bolt because my doors didn’t have the spot chiseled out for it, but that’s easily accomplished with a skinny flathead screwdriver.  Then you can use a power driver to drive in all the bolts and screws and it’s done in no time.  Just pop the doorknob back on when you’re done!

Go switch out your door hardware for an easy update to add character to your home!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Schlage. The opinions and text are all mine.