Fix-it-up Timeline… what should you tackle first and why…

Even if you move into a brand-new home, one that has never been lived in by anyone else, you’ll need to make some changes before your new house becomes your new home.

The first place to assess and potentially change is the area where you will sleep. If you are not going to be able to relax enough to drift off to sleep, your new house will quickly become your new hell. If you are pondering what colours, patterns, etc., are relaxing use the search bar at the top of this page. The same goes for experiences that will help you perform best mentally (we’ll get to home offices in the next paragraph), etc. – the index is your friend.
Next in priority is your home office/work area, if you have or need one. If your office doesn’t work for you, you may find that your income falls short of your house payments.

Socializing with others is key to our happiness as humans, as a species we live to mingle (even the most introverted of us need time with others when we choose). So after you get your home workspace together, spend time making your house a space where you can entertain your friends as you wish, when you wish.

The rest of the spaces can be worked on in whatever order logically makes sense based on how rooms link to each other physically and similar factors. If you have a space that will matter for a hobby you love, you may push it toward the top of the after mingling list.

Whatever you do, always make sure that your space not only aligns with the findings of neuroscience studies (as it will if you use the search box at the top of this page), but also your personality (as reviewed here LINK), your culture (how to do this is discussed here LINK), and the nonverbal messages you pick up. Especially the nonverbal messages you receive. The silent signals that spaces and the objects in them send to us are discussed here. or here.
If you share your home with someone, make sure that your action plan respects their needs as well as yours. Make sure everyone can sleep and everyone can work, for example. The best designs for places for sleeping and places for working are particularly closely linked to our personalities and when where you are trying to sleep or work doesn’t align with yours, sleeping and the quality of your work will suffer.

Designing to support various personality profiles is discussed here.

If you and those you share with are all extraverted or introverted, designing for all is not a challenge at all. If one of you is an extravert and another an introvert, well, that’s when things get their most interesting.
If some are extraverts and some are introverts all shared spaces for thinking and for working need to be designed to support introverted users. Introverts will be overwhelmed by bedrooms and offices that extraverts favour, and their sleep and their work will suffer. Extraverts in spaces designed to introverts standards can find them a little less than they might be, a little dull, but sleeping and working in boring spaces is not such a challenges.

Differences on conscientiousness are not as challenging to handle—practically, they often can be overcome with mutually established protocols for how household areas are cleaned and managed, in general.

Not having the same sorts of scores on the openness-to-experience component of personality profiles can generate some stress and make some choices hot topics of debate. In this case, some compromise on both sides can go a long way—if you are the more open, allow others to make the final decisions on some design elements, while you get to control others. You make get to pick the never seen before on Earth colour that you find best for the dining room walls, but others get to choose the traditional dining table and chairs contained within those exotically painted walls.
Your final question is likely, “OK, what do I deal with first in each space I tackle?”

Consider your dominant sense, discussed here. LINK Regardless of your dominant sense, however, if a space smells bad to you, deal with that smell immediately. Regardless of our dominant sense, odours retain a basic, primordial influence on how we think and behave. After you deal with smells you find bad, deal with inputs you’ll get through your dominant sense. It’s most likely your dominant sense is vision, so next you’ll be picking wall colours, wallpapers, etc.
Once you’ve dealt with your dominant sense, your next priority should be based on this list, skipping over your dominant sense, because you will have already dealt with it.

• Olfactory factors
• Visual elements
• Acoustic components
• Tactile experiences.

So, if you are visually dominant, your priority list would be:

• Bad smells
• Smells more generally (adding a scent that supports knowledge work to an office, for instance)
• Things that are seen, such as wall colours
• Acoustic issues (getting rid of echoes or annoying drips or windchimes, adding a nature soundscape, for instance)
• Optimizing the things you feel with your skin (but itchy, annoying textures have no place in any home and need to be eliminated as soon as you find them).

Neuroscience can smooth out many of the bumps on your route as you turn your new house into your new home.