Which small room remodeling upgrades to do now, and which can wait years

What to take away

A remodel is a window. For a few weeks, work that is normally disruptive and expensive becomes ordinary. The right ranking is not by cost or appearance, but by whether the window is the only chance to do it.

Tier one: things you can only do now

Repairs to what is behind the wall. Failed plumbing, undersized wiring, damp, rot. Nothing else matters if these are left.

Ventilation. A properly sized, properly ducted exhaust fan in a compact bathroom or kitchen changes the room permanently. Retrofitting it later means opening the ceiling again.

Electrical capacity and layout. Outlets where furniture will be, switching where you will reach for it, and circuits sized for what the room will hold.

Structural blocking for future fittings. A few pieces of timber inside a wall now means grab bars, shelving or a wall bed can be fixed properly later. Cheap while the wall is open, expensive afterward.

Fire protection. Detection and, where the project makes it possible, suppression. The National Fire Protection Association's material on home fire sprinkler installation addresses the questions that authorities having jurisdiction commonly field about residential systems. Whether it is feasible in your project depends on your building, your water supply and your local rules, so ask your building department early rather than late.

Tier two: high daily value, reversible later

Lighting. Task light where the task is, a second switch where you enter, dimming where you relax. Used deliberately, those three separate the functions of a room without a partition, which our piece on small space layout options treats as the cheapest zoning available.

Door hardware and door type. A sliding or pocket door where a swing door was eating floor area. Our guide to layout problems and fixes puts that swap in the middle of a ladder of fixes, with rotating one piece of furniture below it and moving the door itself above.

Storage that is reachable. Between hip and shoulder height, with pull outs in anything deep.

Tier three: appearance

Finishes, tile, paint, hardware style. These matter to how the room feels and can be changed later without opening anything.

Everything in tier one shares a property: doing it later means opening something that is currently closed. That is the entire argument for spending here first.

The under sink question

In a compact bathroom, the fight is between storage under the basin and clear space in front of it. The Access Board's guide to lavatories and sinks sets out how the ADA Standards handle this for covered facilities.

A maximum lavatory height of 34 inches measured to the rim or counter, whichever is higher. A maximum mirror height of 40 inches to the bottom of the reflecting surface. Clear floor space for a forward approach, and protection against contact for exposed pipes.

Private homes are not covered by those standards. But if there is any chance somebody in the household will one day need to sit at the basin, a vanity that keeps knee space is worth more over a lifetime than the cabinet it replaces.

The full project sequence is in our guide to what happens during a remodel, and the scoring method behind this ranking is set out in our piece on upgrades that add everyday value.

Common questions