The moment I stepped foot into my new rental bedroom, I knew I was fucked. Grey hairs sprouted from my head. Depressing nine by eleven feet of beige paint met beige carpet, topped with what could only be described as one sad excuse for a window looking onto another building’s brick wall.
Budget for furniture: $200. And some pennies. I paced back and forth with my handy-dandy tape measure obsessively measuring every wall about three times each, willing the numbers to change.
They never do that. But seriously, forcing yourself to only spend money you can actually afford on furniture really makes you think outside of the box.
Decorating on a budget caused me to be more creative than spending all of my money could ever inspire me to be.
First place I checked: Facebook Marketplace. I’m not gonna lie to you folks: people sell the weirdest things on Facebook Marketplace. A sweet older lady named Margaret was downsizing for assisted living and was selling this beautiful wooden nightstand that she’d painted white about twenty years ago.
Sold! It was fifteen bucks. The paint was chipping like MAD, but underneath I could see all of this beautiful wood grain texture.
Bonuses all around! I spent the rest of my night (Instagramming and binge watching Queer Eye, of course) meticulously sanding down the little darling. Sanding stuff is weirdly therapeutic, if you ask me.
Another thing I learned when sanding down my thrifted nightstand: if you buy cheap tools, you’re gonna spend more money fixing the problems your cheap tools gave you later on. I bought this expensive-ass paint stripper because I was lazy and didn’t want to sand everything down. Forty-three dollars later I still found myself sanding down ninety percent of everything because that magical paint stripper wasn’t as magical as the forty-three dollars made it out to be.
Sand everywhere, kids. I decided I wanted to use my thrifted nightstand as my “anchor piece.” Everything else would have to coordinate with this gorgeous honey wood stain color. I stripped the nasty white paint off of it, stained her up nice as the car, and loved that baby within ten dollars.
Trust me on this one: if you can only splurge and buy one furniture item, make it something you absolutely LOVE and everything else will work around that. Okay so my total budget fairy Godmother moment was when I decided I was going to paint one wall. Yep, spent a solid $28 on a quart of this beautiful dusty blue hue.
Paint brands, I apologize. I know you want me to say it was tumultuous or infuriated or some other adjective that describes a raging storm, but it really wasn’t. It was calm.
Painting one wall behind my bed also saved me a bunch of money instead of buying a pricey quilt (they aren’t cheap, y’all.) Designers call this an “accent wall”, but I like to think I was just slacking on paint and making it look like I actually spent money painting my whole room. I left the other walls their original color and it actually made my blue wall pop more, so it didn’t look cheap or like I quit halfway through painting. Painting that single wall really taught me a trick you can use in ANY small space.
You don’t NEED to paint the entire room to make it feel like you painted your entire room. By creating a focal point with that accent wall, it actually made my room feel more spacious and have more intention. Painting one wall also allowed me to duct tape paint around my door frames and my landlord could peer into my room and whistle on his way out because “nothing looked different.” DOUBLE WIN.
Now onto my bed. Mine consisted of this mildly used Craigslist mattress I scrubbed down with every cleaning product I could find in the cleaning aisle. ($60, and yes I sanitized that bitch on every setting.) Bed frames were completely OUT of my budget, so I got creative. TIME TO RAVE ABOUT MY BED FRAME.
I bought fourteen cindercrete blocks from Home Depot ($8 each) and stacked them on top of one another like they were hosting some sort of intern meeting. Then I bought two wood pieces from the wood boards and laid them across the top of my newly formed bed “frame.” ($20, already cut into two separate lengths at the store.) BOOM. I not only had an instant bed frame that looked totally industrial, but it also looked like something you’d buy at West Elm without the weak ass table structure they put between the bed and the floor.
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ALL of my friends asked me where I got it. Instant bedside table underneath for extra blankets and summer clothes I didn’t need piled up (?) on me during the winter months (inside cute plastic bins!) UNDER my bed. Tip from myself: lighting is EVERYTHING when working with a small space.
My overhead lighting cast shadows everywhere and made my room feel like a battleground. What was the solution? Strings of lights!
But we ain’t talking about your bullshit college-over-campus-white lights. Nope. I found warm white LED string lights that could be set on a timer for $18.
Drape them across your window frame, along the top of your DIY bed frame/headboard (mine were literally two wood planks screwed into my wall at the highest point possible painted Stormy Sky) and now you have layers of lighting. Layers, friends. Are important.
Once you introduce mood lighting into your space, your room will look AND feel completely different during the day. Saturday mornings were spent trolling through thrift stores, wand’ring up and down aisles, measuring every potential furniture piece with my handy-dandy hand. I ended up finding this skinny bookshelf I spray painted white to match my walls. ($8, don’t forget that part.) An old-timey mirror with the CUTEST pine carving across the top. ($12, and man does it throw back light from my window.) My personal favorite thrifted item?
This hideous lamp base that looks like a fucking pineapple. ($5, no shade included.) THANKFULLY I picked up that lampshade at Target so I could spray paint it white as well! Throw on a cute fabric (I used fabric I leftover from another DIY project) and BAM. You have yourself a custom lamp.
Spend a few extra bucks on cute lampshades, friends. Floating shelves were another budget friendly way to add style and function to my itty bitty bedroom. All you need are some L-brackets and pine boards.
Comes out to about $22 for THREE shelves. Hang them at different lengths on your wall to store stuff. Books, plants, thrifted goodies that catch your eye.
Ok so plants are honestly the cheapest way to make your space feel full and lived-in. Spider plants are basically free and they propagate SO easily. Have a friend ask you for a spider plant cutting and before you know it, you have three hanging off of your DIY shelves.
The only thing I seriously had to spend dollars on? CURTAINS. Y’all are surprised how much curtains can run you?!
Instead of spending a hefty sum of money on curtains to cover my floor-ceiling beige monster, I bought remnants of fabric at the fabric store for $24 and hemmed them myself. Fabric was this linen-looking material that was cream with a fun texture to it. Hang them higher, wider, and now your window looks BIGGER.
All of this cost me came out to a grand total of $197.
Dollar bills only. Bedroom went from boring beige box to cozy, warm studio in less than a month.
Waited at least TWO weeks to let each piece “earn” it’s way into my room and once I did purchase it, I loved it that much more. My friends started questioning where I got my bedside table that coincidentally matched the rug I “found” on Etsy. IRL.
The biggest thing I learned wasn’t about decorating on a budget. It was about delaying gratification. Waiting for each and every piece to truly earn it’s way onto my wall or into my room made my tiny bedroom that much more intentional than anything Ikea or Target could hope to achieve.
Things I would’ve done differently? Don’t buy that $45 paint stripper, and ALWAYS measure your doorway before purchasing furniture online. Getting that bookshelf up my narrow flight of stairs was the WORST.
