Every home, from an apartment to a castle needs to be given a new lease of life every now and then, but with the cost of living rising, we might not always be able to afford a complete revamp or the price of getting the decorators in. So how can you make your home look good as new on a tight budget?
Decorate your home on a budgetDo It Yourself
We’re all familiar with the term ‘Do It Yourself’ or DIY. It goes without saying that if you need to have some essential repairs done on your home, then please get a professional in, but if you just need to redecorate, then go for it, you can save yourself a lot of money!
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
If you’ve got some furniture that’s looking old and tired and just doesn’t fit in with your redecoration ideas, then don’t throw it away, see if you can salvage it. If you want some new cabinets to go with your dining room, then why not try painting the furniture that you already have? A dull pine shelving unit can be given a ‘shabby chic’ makeover with a spot of paint and some sanding blocks, and an old bookcase can be spruced up with a layer of varnish.
Buy at a discount
With the multitude of low-cost furniture sites online these days, it’s easy to snap up a sale-price sofa or an affordable chest of drawers. If you still want to go down the used-costs-less route, try buying recycled furniture from second-hand stores or look at online ad sites to see who’s selling off the contents of their home. You can pick up decorative furnishings from lampshades to curtains in high street charity shops or attend an auction to see if you can bag a bargain.
Create your own art
Bare walls don’t mean you have to invest in an expensive piece of art to make the room pop, you just need to create your own masterpiece. Many home furnishing shops sell canvas prints, ranging from reproductions of well-known fine art or simple landscapes, and they are always reasonably priced.
You can also buy blank canvas prints from art shops which you can decorate yourself – these are great for decorating a child’s bedroom, as your kids can get involved with the redesign and have fun at the same time.
In fact, there are no limits to what you can hang on your walls: oddball collections such as keys or coloured plates, fabric to make your own wall hangings or you could even stencil on the wall itself. As soon as you start thinking creatively about a space, it’s much easier to stick to a budget and transform your home for a lot less.