How to Decorate Your Home on a Budget - Part I
By Kimberly Griffiths
To help give some budget decorating ideas, I have turned to interior designer, Kathy Wilson, also known as "The Budget Decorator." I interviewed Kathy to help us make our homes look like we spent thousands of dollars when the goal is to decorate on a shoestring budget.
Griffiths:
What do you find are the top three biggest decorating mistakes people make when decorating their homes?
Kathy Wilson
1. Not having a plan is number #1. Money and time are both wasted if you don't have guidelines to follow, and a plan provides that.
2. Fear of change holds people back from celebrating their creativity and showcasing it.
3. And, finally, not realizing that just because you don't have the budget to finish your room all at once doesn't mean you can't get started. Any room can be done in stages, if you wait to have your budget for the whole room, you might never change a thing!
Griffiths
The idea of having no walls between the family room and kitchen in a home allows for families and guests to be more social between the two rooms. Now the person cooking in the kitchen can be part of the conversation in the family room. When decorating a family room, it is so challenging to create a unified look with the rest of the home décor when working with an open floor plan. What ideas for decorating can you recommend for people who are decorating on a budget?
Kathy Wilson
When decorating an open floor plan, it will make the space seem larger and more pulled together if you limit colors to two or three, and then decorate the whole space as one. If you are like me and find the idea of painting the whole area one color boring, mix it up a bit. If your colors are blue and yellow, use blue as a dominant color in one room, then yellow in the other. Use the other color as the accent. Paint a focal wall a more intense shade than the other walls, and paint all the woodwork throughout the space the same color to create flow.
Griffiths
I don't want the furniture in every room of my house to completely match like a showroom, but I see my home more like a mismatch of furniture without anything tying it together. Any suggestions?
Kathy Wilson
Thats an easy one, paint! Bring all the mismatched furniture in a room together by painting it all the same color...oh, and it doesn't have to be white. Black makes an elegant statement, sage green and denim blue are two of the new neutrals, and white can be brushed with stain to antique the look. If you don't wish to paint, then tie the furniture together using the same fabric in cushions and table covers.
The author, Kimberly A. Griffiths, has been through the vicious cycle of debt herself, and provides a no-nonsense system to managing your money paycheck to paycheck. Visit the One Paycheck at a Time Web site for articles and tools to budget your household:
