George Herkes & Son Joinery has been putting joinery into East Lothian homes since 1989, and a home renovation is where that stretch of time actually shows: knowing how a Georgian town house sits differently to a bungalow, and building the joinery to match the house rather than the other way round.
What This Article Covers
- Why open-plan kitchens are now paired with a hidden utility room
- Why solid timber finishes are replacing painted MDF and gloss
- What people renovating in East Lothian are asking for right now
- Which finishes and materials are falling out of favour and why
- Why timber frame extensions are chosen over moving house
- How fitted storage solves the problem of uneven period proportions
That experience sits alongside East Lothian Trading Standards Trusted Trader accreditation, with a 5.0 rating from 62 reviews under that same council-backed scheme, and the same team has worked as a house renovation contractor across Drem as well as the towns and villages around it.
Get in touch with George Herkes & Son Joinery for a free quote on your East Lothian home renovation while your plans are still taking shape.
What are the latest home renovation trends?
The latest home renovation trends favour built-in storage over freestanding furniture, open-plan kitchens softened back with partial walls and screens, and joinery finished in painted timber rather than the pale oak of a few years ago. Underlying most of it is a wish for rooms that work harder, not just look different.
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What people are actually asking for
Kitchens that flex around one big table
Full open-plan knock-throughs have slowed. What we are fitting more of now is a kitchen that opens onto a dining or snug area through a wide opening or partial stud wall, often with a run of fitted cupboards along one side to keep worktops clear. It suits older stone terraces in Musselburgh and Prestonpans just as well as newer builds, because it does not depend on removing a load-bearing wall outright.
Utility and boot rooms as a separate ask
Where a house has a back porch, lean-to or old scullery, the request now is almost always to turn it into a proper utility space with fitted units either side of the machines, rather than squeezing a washer under a worktop in the kitchen. For anyone weighing up a full whole-house project, our page on house renovation in Garvald covers how that kind of room gets folded into a wider renovation plan.
Timber finishes people can point to
Painted shaker doors, exposed timber shelving and solid skirting have overtaken the flat, handleless look that dominated a decade ago. Clients ask for it by name now, having seen it elsewhere, which makes the brief easier to work from than a vague description. Firms that work as house renovation specialists in East Linton see the same pattern across the older stone stock nearer the coast, where painted joinery sits better against original cornicing than anything glossy.
What is quietly going out
All-white, all-gloss kitchens
High-gloss white units, once the safe default, are being replaced steadily rather than dramatically. Nobody is ripping out a working kitchen early, but when one does come out, it is not being replaced with the same finish. Muted greens, blues and off-whites in a satin or matt lacquer are what we are cutting and fitting instead.
Open shelving in wet rooms
Open shelving in bathrooms has fallen away in favour of enclosed cupboards with a tiled or timber front, partly for tidiness and partly because East Lothian’s coastal air does bathroom timber no favours if it sits exposed. A closed cabinet with proper ventilation behind it lasts longer than a shelf ever will.
Statement feature walls
Bold single-wall wallpaper and paint features are being swapped for timber panelling and slatted wood, which reads calmer and ages better than a pattern that dates within a few years. Panelling also survives contact from furniture and pets, which wallpaper does not. Any house renovation builders in East Lothian team fitting this kind of work will tell you the same thing about maintenance over time. Solid timber outlasts a passing pattern.
Storage that is built in rather than bought
Alcove units replacing flat-pack shelving
A chimney breast with two alcoves either side is one of the most common features in East Lothian’s older terraces and villas, and the trend now is to fill those alcoves with units built to the exact width and height of the recess rather than a freestanding bookcase pushed against the wall. Built-in alcove units use the space fully, including the awkward few inches a shop-bought unit always wastes.
Fitted wardrobes into sloped ceilings
Loft rooms and attic bedrooms across the county often have a sloped ceiling on at least one side, and a fitted wardrobe built to follow that slope makes use of space a freestanding wardrobe simply cannot reach into. This is where careful house renovation design in East Saltoun properties benefit from most, since older roof lines rarely match standard wardrobe dimensions.
Media walls instead of TV units
Rather than a television stand and a separate shelving unit, more households want a single media wall built around the chimney breast or a flat section of wall, with cable routing and storage built into the joinery itself. It is a bigger job than buying a unit, but it finishes the room properly rather than adding another piece of furniture to it. Anyone comparing options for a wider house renovation in Edinburgh project will find the same built-in approach applied there for identical reasons.
- Alcove units built to the exact recess, not a standard width
- Wardrobes shaped to sloped ceilings rather than boxed off
- Media walls with storage and cable routing built in
Thinking about Home Renovations? A free quote from George Herkes & Son Joinery costs you nothing but the phone call.
