How to Make Your Home Beautiful (Without Spending a Fortune!)

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By: Natasha Adlam

When I made the decision to invest in my very first home this year, I had a vision of a neutral color palette with pops of color, gold details, a mix of velvets, and perfectly placed house plants.

I scoured Instagram, drooling over home interior images wishing my home looked as beautiful as these magnificent pages. Yet, when I clicked on any images, I discovered most of them were accompanied by a hefty price tag.

Regardless of my lack of budget for home interior purchases, I was determined to get creative. So, I set out to achieve my self-proclaimed Instagram-worthy home decor.

Here are a few of my strategies for achieving an Instagram-worthy home interior on a budget.

Shopping Online Tips

I rarely buy anything full price. If you sign up to email lists from the shops you like, you’ll usually be the first to hear about any sales or discounts.

Pro Tip: Compile a wishlist of products you like to watch out for sale prices. So instead of impulse buying spare cake forks just because they were discounted, you’ll instead have a manicured list of exactly what you need or want.

Cruising the internet scouting for discount codes is a time consuming nightmare, so let Honey do it for you. Honey is a browser extension that finds discount codes and automatically applies them to your shopping cart.

DIY

I’ve always liked the look of rustic open shelves in the kitchen, but when looking online, I found they were out of my price range for something designed to look second-hand, so I decided to make them myself instead.

All I did was measure the space to decide how long I wanted my shelves. Scaffold boards make good shelves as they’re a set width, so I bought the brackets online knowing they’d fit, which saved me a lot of stress.

Styling open shelving gave me such immense joy!

“As they say on Blue Peter, here are some I made earlier”

Greenery

House plants give life to a home and provide a calming effect.

Being a good plant parent is about knowing which plants work with your lifestyle. I have been known to kill the odd plant or five as I unfortunately forget to water them sometimes.

For those of us who tend to forget to water our plant pals, I recommend low maintenance plants like a string of hearts. As a trailing plant, they look really stylish draped over a shelf or in a hanging planter and will enhance any room. They are budget friendly and next to impossible to kill!

Huge house plants typically carry huge price tags to go with them. Instead, save your pennies and buy a smaller version and grow it into a beast.

When you buy a plant and it dies, it’s a disappointment. However, when an expensive plant dies, it’s a tragedy. Save yourself the sadness, and go for minimum maintenance and cost and maximum aesthetic.

“Frankenstein’s Monstera“

Rehoming Unwanted Furniture

One woman’s rubbish is another woman’s treasure!

Decorating your home can be a big investment especially if you need furniture. You can’t always afford to replace big-ticket items (and it’s not very environmentally friendly) so rehoming other people’s unwanted pieces is a more sustainable alternative.

I was on the hunt for a new sofa, but buying new is far too expensive, so I gave up looking on shopping websites, and I turned to Facebook Marketplace. Facebook Marketplace can be a great place to find furniture if you can dedicate extra time to searching through some of the questionable items first.

After scouring Facebook Marketplace, I finally found the perfect grey sofa I envisioned. I couldn’t believe it was in near enough perfect condition and advertised as free. I saved so much by investing a bit of time and it looks super classy.

“A dreamy second-hand sofa bed – saving the world, one piece of furniture at a time.“

Hopefully these tips and tricks will have helped you realize that you don’t need to spend a fortune to make your home beautiful! You just need to get creative and have fun with it!