Home decor can be expensive. But we live, eat, love, and play in our homes, so of course we want it to be a beautiful place! Luckily, making your home gorgeous doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. There are lots of affordable home decorating ideas, and I’m going to share a few with you today.
Family Photos
The first is going to seem a little obvious, but PHOTOS. What better way to make your home a happy place than by putting up photos of the people you love? Since getting married 8 years ago, we’ve lived in 5 different homes, and in each location I took my sweet time deciding what photos to display and where. I don’t like to overload my walls, because I want to really treasure the things I do decide to decorate with.
Photos are a must, but they have to mean something. In my living room, I have a 10×13 frame for each of my children, which I update about every 6 months with their latest photos. I can’t imagine a living space without their little smiling faces!
In my hallway, I did a “beach wall” with photos that are meaningful to me because of my childhood, growing up on the beach in southern Maine. We have had several opportunities to bring our children back to that beach, so these photos mean the world to me.
Putting up family photos does not need to be expensive. You can print photos out at home if you have a good printer, you can print them at a photo kiosk at Walmart or Target, or you can order them online. Frames can be found on sale for great prices; I like Michael’s for buying frames.
DIY
If you are crafty (cough cough unlike me cough), then the sky is your limit! I know lots of people can take a piece of scrapbook paper, some twine, and a frame and turn it into a masterpiece. They are like the McGuyvers of home decorating. If you aren’t particularly crafty (cough cough okay you get it), try Pinterest for ideas. You can start here, at my board for Crafts for the Home.
Heirlooms/Mementos
As I said, it’s important to me to treasure the things I do decide to display in my home. I love to walk by the mirror that hung over my grandmother’s couch for years, because for a moment I’m transported back to that time and place.
You may also notice that I positioned another frame so that I would see it in this mirror while walking by!
When I’m sitting on my couch, I can see the frame that holds my Mother’s Day gift from last year, when my husband recorded himself and my kids saying “I love you” and turned it into a visual sound wave print. Small financial cost, huge personal value.
Canvas Prints
I like including canvas prints on my walls, because I just think they look classy. I even bought this canvas painting off ebay and stretched it myself!
There are websites that offer canvas prints for great prices; a simple Google search will find you several.
In general I like to decorate with fewer large items rather than lots of smaller items, but it really depends on your space. Our last home was small and had a lot of angles, so it was very easy to put up decor, because there were a lot of smaller places instead of large sprawling walls.
Vinyl Designs
But what if you do have large sprawling walls? That has been my dilemma in the past, and it was my dilemma again when we moved a few months ago. I love our new house, but there are a few places where it just screams, “BIG HUGE WHITE WALL!”
In that situation, I like to use vinyl. Vinyl is a great way to cover a large area in one shot. There are decorative designs, trees and landscapes, cute animals for kids’ rooms, and quotes or phrases, among other things.
I recently got to work with Cozy Wall Art, to decorate my kids’ room. They offer a large variety of vinyl wall decals to complement any home’s decor, and each design is available in a huge variety of colors!
My two older kids share a room, and there is a lot of blank wall space, primarily above the top bunk of their bunk beds and the wall above their toy box. Cozy Wall Art to the rescue!
They sent me the Polka Dot Splatter and the Too Many Monkeys Jumping on the Bed decals. My kids love the song “5 Little Monkeys” so it only made sense to put them above their beds!
I love the way they look! It was fairly easy to put up the vinyl (and I’m not super handy with stuff like that), and it looks painted on. The designs are big and bold- perfect for a large wall space!
The polka dots look great too. That wall desperately needed something, and that something needed to be big. The Polka Dot Splatter comes with three sheets of dots, which go one on top of the other to create the look.
I think I will add a framed photo above their dresser, to bring the family into their room. They also have two framed drawings (a kitty and a dog) that my mother-in-law drew for them, which I put up right by their door. Adorable? Yes.
If you like the idea of decorating with vinyl, you can use my discount code “ShapingUp20” to get 20% off at Cozy Wall Art! The code is good through the end of 2013. I know I will be ordering this guy for my bedroom:
I also think Vanessa needs something to go on the wall by her bed (lower bunk), since Carter has the monkeys to look at. I’m in love with these eclectic birds!
How do you decorate your home? Any other affordable home decorating ideas?
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