How to redecorate on a budget

Our environment can have a big impact on us, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that redecorating can have an extremely positive impact on how you feel about your home and your place in it. From painting the bedroom walls to bathroom refurbishment, you’d be amazed at what you can achieve with not much money at all.

Clean and Reshuffle

Before you invest in a huge (and potentially expensive) renovation project, consider what can be achieved by cleaning and reorganising the space and furniture you already have. Try creating your ideal living space with what you’ve already got. That way, you’ll have a clearer idea of what definitely needs to be changed and what you’d actually quite like to keep.

Inexpensive Art

Look at your bare walls. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a nice painting to really bring out the blue, red, orange, yellow, or whatever in the rest of your room? There’s no harm in shopping for the right painting to match. Art is often a lot cheaper than you might think. Heck, you probably have an arty friend who’d happily knock something up for you, free of charge.

Failing that, why not have a go yourself? We’ve all looked at a piece of modern art and thought to ourselves: “I could do that!” If you can, then you should. Grab a canvas, the colours of paint that you want to see in your room and have at it. If you can’t think of anything to paint, just do a Jackson Pollock and see what happens. On the subject of painting…

A Lick of Paint

Colour is such a powerful thing and, because of its power, many people settle for unoffending beiges, browns, and off-whites throughout their home. Though this is a good place to start, it can also be — for lack of a better word — quite boring.

A splash of colour can make the world of difference here. You don’t even need to paint the whole room. You could just paint one wall, or part of one wall, with a single colour or a fun design. This one change can massively improve the look and feel of an entire room.

Quirky Second-Hand Furniture

Bringing in a single, attention-grabbing chair to an otherwise dull room can have a similar effect to painting a wall. Better yet, it’s much easier. Head down to your local charity shop or second-hand furniture shop and pick the quirkiest piece of furniture you can find to use as a centrepiece. The zanier this table, sofa or chair is, the less it matters if the rest of the room is plain and simple.

Reuse, Recycle, & Repurpose

You might not even need to go down to the charity shop. Using a bit of know-how, you can turn some of your old stuff into new stuff. There’s something strangely hip about knocking together shelves and headboards out of repurposed bits and bobs. However, there’s nothing strange about how much money it could save you.

Ask for Help

For more ambitious projects, like bathroom refurbishment, don’t be afraid to ask for help. It doesn’t cost you anything to get an estimate from a local tradesperson. Don’t overestimate your DIY capabilities either. It’s one thing to try fitting new kitchen cabinets yourself; it’s quite another to try your hand at the more complex plumbing jobs of bathroom refurbishment. Paying for someone to do something right the first time is always cheaper than paying someone to fix the mess you’ve created doing it yourself!

Flower Power

Plants are great. They clean the air, they’re bright and they literally bring life into the room. The humble plant has been decorating homes for centuries and has outlived countless styles, trends and artistic movements. Your furniture might start to feel dated twenty years down the line, but most species of plant have remained the same for millions of years — all of which is quite the party topic if someone asks about the latest green addition to your living room.

*Collaborative post