Building your “forever home” means creating a space where you can live comfortably now and in the years to come. If you’re environmentally conscious, adding energy-efficient customizations is one of the best ways to ensure your home remains comfortable, cost-effective, and sustainable as you age in place. From smart layouts to energy-saving fixtures, these upgrades will help lower your bills and support your lifestyle without worrying about future resale value.
Customizations to Create Your Energy-Efficient “Forever Home”
Build a Compact Layout Home
If you plan on building your home from the ground up, be sure to keep in mind the option of a compact layout. A lot of people think that because they’re building their homes that they have to build a big home, but that’s not the case at all.
Big homes that “spread out” tend to lose more heat and aren’t as efficient. Even tall homes or homes with high ceilings tend to be more efficient than wide, one-story homes. Simply put, homes with compact layouts have smaller surface areas, making it easier to retain more heat in the winter and stay cooler in the summer.
Have Energy-Efficient Lighting Installed
According to the US Energy Information Administrations, the usage of lights in your home account for a whopping 14% of most household budget expenses. Making energy-efficient changes to your homes now will prove to be very beneficial, especially since most people and children are working from home now. Many households are seeing significant spikes in their energy bills due to being home more.
The key here would be LED lighting. So whether you want to have chandeliers, recessed lighting, or dimmer lights installed, you can do that all with energy-efficient lighting. This particular customization is one that doesn’t negatively impact the aesthetics of your home at all.
Install Skylights
Skylights are an absolutely beautiful house feature when considering the aesthetics of a home but can also prove to be a wonderful way to reduce your energy usage at home, from a lighting and heating perspective.
All homes have windows but not too many have skylights. Skylights prove to be beneficial for illuminating a room, making the need for electricity reduced. They also provide homes with natural light and heat from the sun, reducing the need to use the thermostat, especially during the winter months.
Conclusion
Whether you’re building your home from the ground-up or if you’re just renovating your current home into the home of your dreams, energy efficiency is key. The above customizations are ones that may not matter to home buyers, and that’s okay because they’re meant just for you.
The whole point of these customizations is to reduce your energy consumption. When you have these customizations done, you can lower your electric rates even further by changing providers.
Conclusion
This is going to prove to be helpful in lowering your energy bill considerably, and this is going to be even more helpful in your forever home when you get older, retire, and have to live off a limited income. The customizations you’ll have done in your younger years will be even more financially beneficial to you in your older years.
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