Although my husband and I like mid-century modern design with warm colors, as you can see in the photograph of our recently-renovated kitchen, above, we try to keep the decoration at the homes we renovate more neutral.

When it comes to renovating a house, we can all agree some improvements are universally necessary.

Floors, for example. Floors are good. And not always there, as I can attest after renovating one dilapidated home with my husband last spring.

Basic kitchen appliances like ovens and refrigerators are always appreciated by potential buyers, as is the absence of odors like cigarette smoke and cat urine.

Beyond those basics, though, lots of choices are subjective when it comes to home renovation. 

How do you decide what color to paint the walls, for example? Or whether to install flooring in a serene gray or hearty walnut hue? Should you take the leap, and knock out that wall? 

All of these decisions come down to the individual taste of the homeowner. And, for me, that is the joy of interior design.

That joy gets a little muddied, though, when you are renovating a home meant for someone else.

My husband, Jake, and I embarked upon that particular adventure for the first time last fall, and now we are in the middle of renovating our second house.

We sold the first house in the spring, at which point I hope it was in objectively better condition than when we first bought it.

The house literally posed every challenge it could muster for us, and renovating it taught us endless lessons in patience and plumbing. It also taught me a great deal about designing an understated home with broad appeal.

Candidly, learning that lesson took some practice. I really love interior design – I started subscribing to House Beautiful when I was in middle school – but my taste veers toward unique and colorful.

To illustrate, my ‘peak’ design moment as a young adolescent was splatterpainting the lime green accent wall in my bedroom with hot pink paint. My mom hated it, but I thought it was the most fantastic thing ever.

Today, I’d like to believe I’ve tempered my taste to a preference for warm colors and mid-century modern-inspired interiors. Me and my husband’s living room is a pretty good example of my personal design style.

We have been incrementally renovating our home between flip houses, and that has given me a chance to wallow in mid-century modern in ways that I simply cannot at a house that isn’t mine.

When we did a major renovation of our kitchen recently, it could technically be whatever colorful creation I wanted, as long as Jake liked it too. The flip house’s kitchen, meanwhile, was crafted as a blank slate.

The easiest way to telegraph those different styles was through color choices.

In our kitchen, my penchant for bold colors is prevalent. We replaced our gray kitchen cabinets with navy ones that better match the woodsy tones throughout the rest of the house, and we put up playful wallpaper for the backsplash.

At our first flip house, meanwhile, the name of the game was ‘clean,’ and ‘white.’ To add dimension to the space, we added a pop of gray with the backsplash, but we definitely avoided bright colors.

However, other colors besides gray and white can feel neutral, too, as long as they are applied thoughtfully. The house we are currently renovating is a great example of that.

It is very different from the house we completed last spring, and its gorgeous, if weathered, woodwork calls for traditional design choices. The stark white walls and gray flooring we used in the previous house would feel wrong for the space.

Because I thought this house could handle a wider variety of colors, I decided to paint the kitchen cabinets a sage green. Neutral, but interesting. I took some of that green outside the house, too, and deepened it into forest green accents for the front door and porch.

That being said, other areas of the house require less color, not more.

A previous owner patterned an upstairs bedroom in eye-watering purple and turquoise diamonds. The living room’s tri-colored walls were also a trip before I painted them over in ivory white.

Beyond color choices, the actual layout of a space provides an opportunity to tweak the way it feels, as well. Changing the layout requires caution, however – preferences for a room’s flow and structure can be very personal.

At home, we gave ourselves permission to make some unusual choices when it came to our kitchen’s layout. The open shelving we installed would have been too risky for a flip house, but we love the way it looks and it fits our storage needs.

At the houses we renovate, we have tried to implement special, but safe features like the current house’s sage green cabinets or a built-in cutting board at the previous house.

 Taking a sledgehammer to parts of the house is an even more dramatic way to transform the space. Depending on the circumstances, knocking down walls can be classified as a personal decision or a smart design choice.

We decided that portions of the house we’re currently renovating fell into the ‘smart design choice’ category, and made the scary decision to demolish.

Removing the walls that enclosed the three-season porch turned out to be a good move. Now, one enters the house through a spacious open-air porch instead of a dark, dingy room with a dead bird in the corner (okay, we would have removed the bird carcass regardless of what other design choices we made.) 

Repurposing one of the two closets in an upstairs bedroom to double the tiny bathroom’s square footage was also an easy choice. Between two closets and a large bathroom with a shower, we figured most buyers would choose the latter.

Our home kitchen renovation, meanwhile, involved demolition which fell under the ‘personal decision’ category. We only gained about nine extra feet of space by knocking down a wall at the end of the kitchen, but it was a strategic step toward organizing my large collection of baking utensils.

To sum up, getting to know three very different houses over the past few years has taught me that a home is a personal thing.

The house itself can dictate some of the design choices – traditional or modern, for example – but the owners are an intimate part of that process, too.

I would hope that when Jake and I renovate a home, we are merely jumpstarting the design process. After moving into the clean, blank slate we have created, the house’s new owners can enhance that expectant space with a style that is all their own.

And, if it is purple and turquoise diamond patterned paint that will make them happy, then that is exactly what they should do.