Home Upgrades That Aren't Worth Your Money, According To HGTV's Lyndsay Lamb

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If anyone knows how to sell a house, it's HGTV's Lyndsay Lamb. Along with her sister Leslie Davis, the design powerhouse has been making even the most "Unsellable Houses" move on the market because she knows all the right tweaks to close the sale. However, Lamb cautions that not all home upgrades are worth your money, especially if you're making them to sell your home faster. 

To get the most value out of home upgrades, they need to have a guaranteed return on investment. For example, if you install a pool in your backyard right before you move, there is no guarantee you'll go on to nab a higher selling price because not everyone sees them as an asset. However, something like an updated kitchen or a new roof might convince buyers to shell out more cash upfront because it's money they won't need to spend down the line since you've already taken care of it for them. Whether your renovation budget is big or small, Lamb thinks these home upgrades just don't have the ROI to make them worth it.

If you're living in your forever home, feel free to paint your rooms whatever bold hue you desire. However, if you're in a starter house or know you might need to downsize at some point, just know you will need to repaint in order to have a better chance of selling later on. In the Season 4 episode "Color Confusion to Oasis," Lamb was shocked by the collage of colors one client had on the walls of their home. "I truly do not know how many colors of paint are in this home," Davis told her, per Realtor.com. "Probably just around eight," Lamb replied, noting the shades of yellow, orange, brown, and even green around her. "Fifteen," joked Davis.

That said, there were two problems with the paint in this house. 1) The sheer amount of different colors, as it was visually overwhelming, and 2) the colors themselves were not neutral, so they had limited mass appeal. "I really want to simplify it with one beautiful, neutral color," Lamb said in the episode, telling her clients she planned to use White Tail from Sherwin-Williams. "That would give us that brilliant white throughout the entire home." White is a great neutral canvas for selling a home. However, be sure to go with a warmer white (White Tail has yellow undertones!) so it seems crisp and inviting, not stark.

You can save a lot on home upgrades if you have a knack for DIY and aren't afraid of getting your hands dirty. However, even if you've been doing things like flipping vintage furniture or installing LVP for years, it doesn't mean that you have the skill set to effectively and safely do the most intricate tasks of renovating your home. When asked about things that should always be outsourced to a professional, Lamb told the Maryland Home & Garden + Craft Show: "Anything that requires a permit, like electrical or plumbing. Don't take on more than you can handle." In fact, even though Lamb is the queen of flipping, she and Davis have renovation contractors Owen Mather and Don Reidy doing the bulk of the work since it guarantees the job will get executed correctly.

Trying to do this work on your own typically isn't worth the money because of how much training and experience you need to do things right. The sisters recommend hiring a professional from the outset so you don't spend money twice. First on attempting the project yourself, then on having a licensed contractor come in behind you to make sure everything actually works or fix the damage you caused by accident. A few of the best tips for hiring a contractor include gathering at least three written quotes so you can compare pricing, as well as looking into each person or company's reputation with the local consumer protection office. This is to make sure they have a track record of completing quality work. 

If you plan to update your carpet to sell your home, remember that the fun design option isn't going to be something that most people are interested in. Instead, the majority of people will want plain flooring underfoot. In most cases, the carpet should be a blank canvas, not the star of the show. In the second episode of Season 5, a client had a real soft spot for the carpet in her house. It was covered in flowers, which Lamb politely called "beautiful" until she was interrupted by her sister. "No, it's not, Lyndsay," Davis said. "99.6 percent of people [won't like it.]"

Lucky for the designer duo, when they ripped up the floral carpet, they found original hardwood underneath, so they didn't need to put down another option after all. However, if you are partial to carpet and plan to install some, there are a few mistakes everyone makes that you should avoid. First, consider the fiber length. You don't want them to be so short they seem cheap and threadbare, but the strings shouldn't be so long that your carpet sheds, either. Next, consider the color based on perceived lifestyle. While a neutral pattern is ideal, going too light (like a white or cream, for example) might put off most buyers because it will show everything. While that might not be a problem 

When updating your home, especially before trying to list it, Lamb thinks it's best to keep the main thing main. This means staying focused and spending the majority of your money where people actually care about upgrades instead of spreading it too thinly by trying to cover everything. "81% of buyers say that an updated kitchen and bathrooms are the most important features when purchasing a home," she wrote in her blog, Lamb & Co., explaining the budget of a recent renovation. "Our budget for this project was $100,000, and we knew that in order to get top-dollar on this home, we needed to focus primarily on the kitchen, the main bathroom, and landscaping."

The reason the kitchen and bathroom should be your focus is that they are so hard to fix up! There's plumbing and electrical work to do, tiling and countertops to update, as well as old appliances to swap out — all things that tend to add up quickly. Buyers are often willing to pay a premium for updated spaces, especially ones they know are costly and time-consuming to renovate themselves. Plus, these rooms are high-use areas, so functionality and layout are critical. If they have poor storage, awkward layouts, or old appliances, it can be a huge turnoff. All buyers would see are the dollar signs they'll need to shell out to update things themselves, so they might offer less during negotiations.

It's never a good idea to spend money without a clear purpose. If your kitchen only needs a few tweaks to be current, there's no need to splurge on a full remodel. This was made clear in the Season 5 episode "Sell With a Kiss." In it, the client had a looked-after kitchen with well-maintained cabinets. "Our biggest thing in your home was, we didn't want to spend money where it wasn't needed," Davis said about her sister's plan, per Realtor.com. "To go and change out this kitchen would've cost us our whole budget of $30,000, and it wouldn't have returned for us."

Instead of a major revamp, the kitchen only got a slight facelift. Because the home had a relatively open floor plan, the freshly laid LVP extended into the kitchen. "The new LVP floors are lighter than the old laminate floors, which helps it feel brighter and bigger," Lamb said about the $7,425 spent on this portion of the project. Next, she swapped out the fixtures in the kitchen so everything felt fresh and uniform. New drawer pulls, lightswitch covers, and outlet covers can go a long way towards sprucing up a space with workable countertops and appliances. Remember, you can mix metals across different fixtures if you like the look, but things that come in sets should always match to keep things from looking too hodgepodge.

The final tip Lamb has for kitchen upgrades is that all-white kitchens are no longer worth the money it'll take to create them. She declared the trend outdated back in 2021, making them well past their prime now. "While the all-white kitchen had its moment, many more unique and functional options are available," she shared on Lamb & Co. "Yes, a white-on-white kitchen has the potential to be timeless, but at this point, it's a bit overdone and not wow-worthy."

While having white in your kitchen is certainly not going to tank your home's selling price, it's the intense layering of the color that Lamb thinks won't give you a good enough ROI when you are renovating. "Instead, try painting the cabinets or adding in a colored backsplash to keep your space on-trend for an easy change," she wrote. Colorful painted cabinets are an easy way to add personality to your kitchen, but this doesn't mean rushing out to nab the color of the year for your space. As you know, this will fall out of vogue even quicker. Instead, if you have wooden cabinets, opt for longer-lasting colors, like shades of beige, moody blues, or even deep gray. Whatever color you choose, it helps to have a paint specifically formulated for the task, like the ALL-IN-ONE Paint from Heirloom Traditions, which is made for painting cabinets and furniture. It doesn't require a primer or top coat, nor do you need to sand down the cabinets first, making the project a lot simpler.

A finished basement is a valuable feature, but if it's just a little outdated, Lamb doesn't think it's worth the investment to modernize it completely. In the Season 3 episode "Builder Drab to Coastal Fab," she and her sister convinced their client that, since the rest of the house was in dire need of an update, they shouldn't waste money on the finished basement that was mostly fine. "It wouldn't sell the house to do a full remodel down there," Davis said. "It'd be money spent but not needed." Instead, the pair invested in a smattering of smaller updates instead. 

The finished basement had a secondary kitchen, and while the yellow pine cabinets weren't trendy, they were well maintained. Instead of gutting them for something more stylish, they invested $4,500 on new quartz countertops and $780 on a porcelain backsplash. While that's not chump change, it's much cheaper than the $20,000+ usually needed to fully remodel a kitchen. They also updated the cabinet pulls to a set that looks similar to the Amerdeco 10-Pack Matte Black 5-Inch Pulls. When considering updates to your finished basement, these smaller tweaks can contribute towards your final resale price. 

When upgrading your duplex, Lamb thinks you need to be strategic about where you spend your money to ensure maximum ROI. This is especially true if you are going to live in one half and rent out the other. It makes more sense to use your budget to make one part great at a time rather than producing two underdone, mediocre options. In the Season 5 episode, "A Tricky Listing," Davis and Lamb initially considered dividing the renovation budget between the upstairs and downstairs units. However, the sisters pivoted when they realized neither part would get everything it really needed. Instead, they focused on entirely redoing one and making a few small tweaks to the other. "By no means are we minimizing this second home; but instead, we're making sure we're really really highlighting all the features into the primary residence," Lamb said, per Realtor.com.

While the upstairs unit received a new kitchen layout, updated cabinets, new walls, and larger doors, the downstairs unit got a fresh coat of paint and new carpet. Similar to fully remodeling a finished basement, investing in the part of the duplex you don't plan to occupy upfront may not be worth it. Instead, staggering the renovations can be a great way to recoup cash in between projects. In competitive markets, a clean, freshly painted unit can command a high rental price just because of its location without any fancy renovations.

If your home has an interesting floor plan — perhaps with a sunken living room or a home office that's two steps up from the rest of the story — Lamb thinks trying to level the space isn't going to be worth it financially. It's a tricky project, but one she considered tackling in the Season 3 episode "Builder Drab to Coastal Fab." However, because of how expensive and logistically thorny the undertaking would be, she decided to just leave it alone. Instead, she used decor as a unifying feature — a choice that would save the homeowners thousands. "I want the potential buyer to see it as a fun space that is connected to the rest of the living [area], whereas before it felt like it was very disconnected," Lamb said about her styling choices, per Realtor.com.

She chose to add an accent wall to make the lower living room seem cozier. She also made sure that everyone walking into the space understood its exact function, so she added an expertly-placed couch, circular area rug (like this Hausattire Hand Woven Jute Braided Rug), and an ottoman. If you have a uniquely shaped room in your own home, focus more on using it to its full potential or on tying it into the rest of your house with decor rather than worrying about the two steps down taken to enter it.