Electrical Repair Jobs Around the Home

Three Types of Electrical Upgrades to Enhance Your Home

If you want to improve your home, you might not immediately start thinking about the electrical components of the building. But, electrical upgrades can enhance the safety, convenience and aesthetics of your home. Here's how.

Safety

At times, dealing with something as commonplace as electricity can make you forget how dangerous it is. But old wiring can cause house fires and even electrocution. The wires that carry electricity to the outlets run through the walls where you can't see them. So their condition is not plain to see.

These wires are covered in a layer of insulation, so the live current doesn't directly connect to the building. But, over time, this insulating layer wears away, leaving the wires exposed. Thus, if you have an old house or the wiring hasn't been checked for many years, you should book an inspection with an electrical contractor. After all, safety is more important than home upgrades such as new flooring or wall colour.

Convenience

Electrical upgrades can also improve the convenience of your home. To access electricity for your devices, you need to use wall outlets. Your home may have been built a while ago, before many of today's gadgets were even invented. So it may not have enough outlets in convenient spots.

Electrical contractors can add extra ones, which will prevent you from resorting to dangerous extension cords that can overload the system. Life will be so much easier, in any case, with outlets for everything. At the same time, they can add charging stations for your phone, laptop and other items. An electrician can also upgrade the system's capacity if you're constantly tripping the circuitry because it's overloaded.

Aesthetics

An electrical upgrade that will make your home more attractive is lighting improvements. The lighting in a room has a big effect on its atmosphere and mood. While you can only indirectly control daylight with window coverings, you have total control over artificial light.

If you want to make your kitchen more inviting, focus on the lighting arrangement. For example, you could fit low-watt recessed lights sprinkled across the ceiling to disperse soft and even illumination around the room. This setup will function better than one glary light in the centre of the ceiling that has to reach everywhere.

You can layer the lighting as well. For example, fit strip lights under the upper cabinets to brighten the countertop. Efficient LED globes come in different shades of white and yellow, so opt for a natural tone that will make the food look appealing.

You can also install accent lights on the wall to shine on a piece of artwork or a cabinet crockery display. Each of these lighting sources can be connected to separate switches. So, to create a relaxing, moody feel at night, you could turn on the under cabinet and the accent lighting only.