Decor on a budget

Prioritising is the key if you are decorating the interiors of your home on a budget. Selecting important rooms, elements and themes that are most significant to you and your family is the key to saving a lot of time and money. Analyse your current home, furnishings and decorations. By improving what you already have, instead of completely starting over, interior decorating on a budget comes together in a simple process with an elegant finish.

Here are few simple and inexpensive decorating ideas to liven up a room. What’s more, all of them can be accomplished over a weekend, saving both time and money:
Re-paint cabinets, instead of replacing them. The paint will clean, freshen and liven up a cabinet. Just check with a local paint supply store for advice on painting unusual surfaces.
Cover imperfections instead of fixing them. For example, place a rug over a discoloured spot on your floor or a tapestry on a rough wall.

Hang wallpaper.

Utilise mirrors to create light, space and special accents. Place them behind artistic belongings, highlighting their character from all sides.

Hide the clutter. Nothing improves the look of a room more than neat and organised decorations. Be creative and utilise your décor as storage, with baskets, compartment beaches or cabinets. Clump current decorations. Preview your assortment of knick knack, art and decorations, gather them from the different nooks of the house. Rearrange the treasures, creating collections and themes, thus defining a new look by highlighting your current possessions.

Bring the outdoors inside. Real or fake plants, herbs or flowers brighten up a room.
Create your own wall art. Stencil patterns, wallpaper borders, are all inexpensive items to create interest in a room’s outer edges.

Fabric acts like a layer of paint for your upholstery. Cover those dining room chairs, try slipcovers for fading couches, create fresh pillows, re-do curtains and become creative with blankets, quilt and bed liners.

Replace your lampshades. Light can make or break a room.

Paint is a trendy budget decorator’s best friend. It creates a dramatic impact for little money and effort. Be brave and try out new options. Paint only one wall a vibrant colour, then go on to layer and balance colours. Also paint furniture.

Work with what you have

Put your best foot forward. With a tight budget, we cannot bring all that we desire to decorate our home, so work with what you have. Select your finest furnishings and decorations and place them in areas that are commonly used.

Even when completely redesigning a room or a house, interior decorating on a budget is possible. Take the time to structure a budget. Research for materials and layouts that are less expensive. Use replicas of the real thing, like laminate wood flooring, vinyl flooring or ceramic. Using these flooring options instead of stones saves money without sacrificing the look.

Details are what create a sense of quality. Spend a little extra on simple accessory pieces like faucets or fixtures, and cut costs on the larger ticket items. Employ molding to add elegance with little expense. Recover cabinets instead of replacing them. Create storage to hide clutter, instantly improving the look of the room.

Removing walls is an inexpensive technique to redesign a home. Create open shelves, or built-ins as excellent places to highlight your artistic collection. They can turn out to be cheaper than furniture.

Buying second hand products is a key component of interior decorating on a budget. When buying used products, locating a matched set can be difficult. Follow the mix-and-match interior decorating philosophy. As long as you balance colour and scale while sticking to a theme, mismatched items can actually enhance a room’s décor. The best examples are different dining room chairs or mismatched dishes and flatware.

See if you can recycle

Take a second look. Before you throw away items from around your home, take a second look at it and invest some thought into whether you could use the item for decorating your home. Old curtains that are white or beige can be dyed to fall colours such as orange, reds, greens and browns. It works for old tablecloths as well.

Whenever there is a budget, imagination is the key ingredient to success. Three key items - paint, fabric and artwork - are important when it comes to saving money without sacrificing on quality.

Paint freshens up any used item instantly. Fabric offers novelty to furniture as slipcovers, new pillow covers, bed linens and window dressings. Adorn your walls with photos, paintings and the like, and add some colour to the room.

Save on costs by adopting do it yourself techniques. Decorating can be enjoyable and cost-effective at the same time. Make sure you balance form and function. Consistency and simplicity are decorating ideas that work for all financial plans and are particularly useful for interior decorating on a budget.

A lot of money spent on decorating a small space on a budget is wasted if a plan is not developed in the beginning of the project.  Be realistic in what you want to do and what you can afford to spend. Décor magazines and online resources are great sources for estimating your decorating projects. Make a list of everything you want to do and purchase.

Then, prioritise each item based on its impact on the overall look of the room. You may find out that one really special item may be more expensive than purchasing three or four smaller items, but that one expensive item may also provide significantly more impact in the room.

(The author is an interior designer, Modccon Interiors)