4 Steps to Decorating Your Home

Are you think of embarking on actual home decorating for the first time? Whether you’ve just moved out on your own, bought your first home or decided that you’ve had enough of living in a place decorated by the nearest big box store, you might wonder where you should begin. Going about home decoration piece by piece can leave you with a hodgepodge of clashing ideas and design. The steps below will help you make a plan to create spaces at home that you’ll love even if you are not someone who ordinarily thinks in a very visual way.

Start Gathering Ideas

Both a physical notebook and either an app or just a bookmarks folder for online photos can help you begin collecting ideas about furniture, styles, colors and anything else you like. The advantage of the physical notebook is that you can include sketches, jot down ideas and include fabric and paint samples. Over time, you will get a sense of what you want a room to look like.

Create a Budget

There’s really no limit to what you can spend if you had the available funds, so you will need to make a budget whether you have $200, $2000 or $20,000. If your dreams exceed your means, see if there are ways you can cut back on your spending to save money. Some of those ways might be relatively painless. For example, are you really using that gym membership you’re paying for? Could you get a better deal on your car insurance? If you have student loans, look into options for refinancing them with a private lender. This can improve your finances drastically by saving money on your monthly expenses.

Make a Design Board

A white board, a piece of poster board or even half of a flattened cardboard box will suffice to give you the space to start taking ideas from online, your notebook and your head and experimenting with how you will place them throughout your home. Once you have a good idea from the board of what you want to do, you can move into real life, marking out where you would like to place furniture or hang artwork with painter’s tape in each of your rooms.

Go Shopping

If you’ve dreamed big, pored over your budget, and marked your home with tape only to discover that everything costs more than you expected, don’t despair. There are a lot of ways to find bargains, including thrift stores, estate sales and yard sales. If your neighborhood has an email list or online community, see if people have items they are getting rid of. You’d be surprised what people will give away for free to a good home or for the favor of having it hauled away. Many artists and craftspeople sell their work online for less than you’d pay for it elsewhere, and some people might be open to bartering skills or goods. You may be able to repurpose some things you already own. Keep in mind as well that decorating does not have to be done all at once. You can take your time acquiring high-quality items and saving up for anything that is particularly expensive.