Spruce Up Your Living Room on a Budget*

I’m trying to stick to a spending ban at the moment, because this year I want to spend money on less frivolous stuff and more adventures. Unfortunately that means the house ends up slightly forgotten. It’s not just my house though, with budgets tight for everyone at the moment, a lot of people find having to choose between decorating and something else. However, there are lots of things you can do to spruce up your home while on a budget. Here are some simple ways to make your living room a place you can’t wait to spend time in.

Invest a Floor That’s Easy to Clean
One of the quickest ways to freshen up a room is to change the floor from carpet to something that can be cleaned easily and doesn’t wear away like a carpet. More and more homes and choosing to change from carpet to a wood look because it’s much easier to maintain,  especially if you have pets or young children. Wood flooring can be expensive but there are places out there than offer cheap laminate flooring that can look just as good as the real thing for a fraction of the cost!

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Alluring Accents
A favourite decorating method used by interior designers is to give a room a neutral palette and to add personality with dashes of pattern and colour. This is a great rule to follow in your home, since colour accents can be changed simply by updating your cushions, rugs, art and lamps. A group of single-colour candles, in different shapes and sizes, add instant interest to a shelf. Similarly, a huddle of picture frames, which you can pick up cheaply and paint to match, add focus to a plain wall. Take a look at the base colour you’ve used for your walls and carpet. Grab some paint charts from a DIY shop and see which accent colours work with that background shade. Be bold. Strong hues like lime green, saffron, electric blue, teal, jade or bronze really update a tired room and lift your mood.

Shabby Chic, Or Just Shabby?
The shabby chic look is very fashionable, but there’s a difference between a carefully orchestrated, vintage look, and a mass of clutter. Take a good look at your room. If you see mess, have a ruthless clear-out. We all have stray items which don’t need to be in the living room, but which migrate there over time. Tatty magazines, stationery, and bits and bobs which have no business taking up space on your sofa, should be banished to storage units elsewhere. Give tired chairs and cabinets vigour by covering in funky fabric or by adding new door handles. Add a vibrant throw to your favourite chair. Kitsch designs, geometric patterns, and home accessories give a neutral room fizz.

Get Things Moving
Sometimes simply repositioning furniture can be pleasing to the eye. Take this opportunity to fix any practical issues with layout. Do you always catch your knee on that desk on the way to the kitchen? Then find a better spot for it. If you have a nest of cables under your computer, sort them out by asking an electrician to fit a new plug point.

Delightful Lighting
As any Hollywood starlet will tell you, careful lighting can turn a plain Jane into a glamour puss. The same goes for your home. There are so many lovely, and affordable, light fixtures out there, with high street chains and DIY giants all offering eye-catching lines. A well-placed standard lamp can highlight a room’s best feature, much like a slick of highlighter on cheekbones can light up a face.

Camoflage The Bad Bits
Every living room has functional, unattractive items that you have to live with, but you can lessen their impact. The television is an integral part of the living room, so you often don’t notice how much space it takes up, and how much its shiny surfaces sit awkwardly with the elegant room you have created. Instead of letting it loiter on your carpet, place it on a wall with brackets. This will free up valuable space and discourage you from letting unsightly DVDs breed around the base. Central heating is a luxury most of us couldn’t live without, but radiators are rarely pretty. Radiator covers are a favourite disguise recommended by House To Home magazine. They come in lots of styles and they are a neat way of hiding bulky heaters. You can also buy magnetic radwraps – funky innovations which can be personalised, using favourite photographs.

There are oodles more ideas out there to help you bring the sparkle back to your living room. So let your imagination take over, and enjoy your new look.