How to Decorate Your Home for Cheap

A minimalist approach to decorating automatically endows you with the ability to decorate on the cheap.

The onslaught of television programs that show how to create a dazzling interior design scheme on the cheap has made affordable chic a new addition to the design vernacular. You don't have to go into debt to transform a home that offers a less than exciting visual enticement. With a little effort you can not only save money, but get free expert advice and discover stylish additions to your décor at tremendous savings over what less informed people spent.

Things You'll Need

• Access to yard sales, flea markets, pawn shops and junkyards
• Can of paint
• Paintbrush or roller

Instructions

1. Get professional advice without paying for the services of an expensive interior designer. Engage in conversation the workers and owners of local decorating supply stores. Those who make a living selling items from paint to wallpaper to furniture can provide quite useful advice and tips on how to transform the design you dream about into a reality.

2. Save money at the same time that you achieve a dramatic effect by painting just one wall instead of all four walls. One wall can take on a much bolder and daring color without overwhelming the senses than can be accomplished by painting all the walls. Go for a striking decorative effect by choosing a vibrant color that makes a statement for the entire room.

3. Head to flea markets, yard sales, junk stores and pawn shops to browse through affordably priced items you can incorporate into your decorative plans. Look for items that are priced very cheaply because they suffer some kind of damage or flaw; you can easily fix them by reupholstering or staining or painting or even disassembling, so that you wind up using only one part of the object.

4. Look for bargains in furniture stores based on variations in style, size or color. Dare to decorate with dining room chairs that don't match and were a bargain precisely because they didn't. Bargain down the price for purchasing a sofa and recliner of different colors or materials. Look for the odd piece that the store owner is eager to get rid of in order to fill the space with a piece of furniture more likely to sell at a higher price.

5. Utilize craft projects to transform accessories so that they better suit your design plans. Buy black and white posters that you tint yourself to create an old-fashioned look. Purchase a mass-produced and affordable table or desk and turn it into a replica of something more vintage through the process of antique painting techniques.

6. Head to the local community college and check in with the Art Department to find original and one-of-a-kind artwork like oil paintings or sculptures made by students eager to make a sale at any price you are willing to offer. You may be able to decorate every room in the house with a unique piece of art for just a couple of hundred dollars.

7. Try to discover something that is totally off-the-wall that you can utilize as the focal point for a room's decorating scheme when you spend a weekend hitting the yard sales, flea markets, junkyards and even the dumpsters behind retail stores. Look for an oddball piece of décor that is priced to move precisely because it does not easily fit into a traditional design scheme. Among the items you might consider: a store mannequin discarded into the trash because its head came off, a garishly colored chair from the 1960s, a wagon wheel that can become the foundation for an overhead chandelier or a random collection of battered hats featuring fedoras, bowlers, porkpies and top hats that you can display on the wall or even hang from the ceiling.

References

• Rental Decorating: Budget Decorating
• "Make It Yours"; Brian Kramer, Ed.; 2006
• "Sensible Chic"; Amy Tincher-Durik, Ed.; 2004