Va va vroom: How to do up your garage

Feel welcomed into your home, sweet home from the second you park your car.

How to do up your garage

To view more of this project see "Get a better garage"

If your garage is connected to your home, it's the first and last thing you will see every time you leave or enter your house. Why not make it a sight for sore eyes with some functional, yet attractive design and decoration? Feel welcomed into your home, sweet home from the second you park your car.

The garage is also an ideal place for storage, helping declutter the rest of your home. Taking the time to set up useful storage spaces in the garage can make the rest of the home feel like an oasis. Here are our top tips for doing up your garage.

Style worthy of a Ferrari

Just because we can't all have one of these fast sports cars parked in our garage doesn't mean the decor can't ooze style. Install sliding door wardrobes along an entire wall and paint the outside in a sleek, dark colour such as Resene All Black or Resene Armadillo. As for your door handles, add a pop of fiery, fast red with a coat of Resene Havoc.

Next, shelve the inside so you can store tools, gardening equipment, cables, sporting gear and other knicks and knacks that would typically be kept in the garage. Drawers with dividers are also practical for keeping nails, screws and other smaller tools neat and tidy, and out of harm's way.

Keeping all of these out of sight by sliding the door shut automatically makes the garage feel roomy, leaving more space to park the cars, with fewer health and safety risks to boot. It's just not safe for children to hop out the car and trip over loose tools lying around the ground. For that matter, it's not good for your car tyres, either!

Red carpet ride

Don't just treat your garage to some glam. Roll into the garage in style by driving over a driveway just as inviting as a red carpet, simply by using a colour from the Resene Decks/driveways range. If you'd like lighter shades to match with the exterior pastel paint tones of your home, try either Resene Bleached Sand or Resene Bleached Grey.

On the other hand, if your home is not painted in neutral hues but has bold colour, a darker driveway can help balance the colour scheme and outline or 'frame' your home. Try Resene Black for this purpose. It will also set the tone nicely as a prelude to the inside of your sleek garage.

Vintage glam

Not everyone likes a contemporary, modern feel. If vintage vibes are close to your heart, show off your personality in the garage by adding the Alta Gamma Home 15895 wallpaper to one wall. It shows a sepia toned and hessian beige panel with an inky blue old school Volkswagon car printed on top. Parking your car next to this beauty may transport you down Memory Lane to times gone by, and you won't even need to change lanes as the ride is so fun!

Best of all, this wallpaper is super-washable. A garage can get pretty smoky and grimy, but you never have to lose the detail and crispness of the wallpaper as you can simply wash it.

Putting the fun in functional

Pop a 'welcome home' mat with thick bristles just outside the door connecting the garage to your home's interior. Usually these mats are put outside a front door, but seeing as you will be leaving your car here, it's just as important to enter with clean shoes from the garage. Another option is to keep a shoe rack right beside the door so you can leave them in the garage for easy access.

Finally, nail a small wooden key stand to the wall next to the door so you never have to go on a pesky car key hunt again! You can paint this in Resene Havoc too, to match the door handles.