Accent pillows, Moroccan prints, vintage teapots — all it takes is the right touch to make your living room feel cozy and unique. Sure, you could buy these items (or at least rent them), but that would be way too expensive.
Instead, you can use these nine inexpensive ideas to make your living room feel like home without breaking the bank.
- Lounge Around. Add a few pillows to the couch, and your living room feels like a living room. The key is to have different textures and patterns. Instead of searching through every store in town looking for inexpensive pillows, head to IKEA and pick up a dozen or so pillow covers.
They start at less than $3 each, and choosing one with a bold pattern will instantly make your room memorable.
- Share the Load. If you have a lounge chair and loveseat, why not bring both into the room? Not only does this make your family room look cozier, but it also helps save space.
Plus, sharing pillows is an inexpensive way to create seating arrangements that you can change with the seasons.
- Rugged Enough for Your Dogs. Cute, furry friends are not the only ones who benefit from a soft and cozy rug in the living room.
All dogs love to snuggle on a plush, warm rug. And you can find inexpensive rugs on eBay or at thrift stores.
- Make Your Air Conditioner Work Extra Hard in Summer. In winter, the house is chilly but your air conditioner is running at full blast, trying to keep you cool.
Here some additional ways specially for our subscribers
- Frame vintage postcards.
Get creative with your frame selection: a vintage photo frame or even an old camera lens could help you create a really unique wall display.
- Create a mismatched bookshelf.
Using different styles and colors of bookshelves is a great way to give your home that mishmash feel. Try buying used ones from a thrift store, or if you’re handy, construct your own.
- Decoupage a table.
Old drawing tables are easy to find at thrift stores and make great all-purpose tables for the living room — or any room of the house, really.
You’ll just need to decouple them with decorative papers, preferably wallpaper scraps that you’ve collected over time (to justify to yourself why they’re not in storage).
- Hang one string of twinkle lights.
Line your walls and the ceiling with twinkle lights and you’ll have instant, instant holiday magic in no time.
- Hang multiple vintage items in a row.
A lot of vintage stores and Etsy sellers sell similar-looking mismatched chairs, so why not get creative with that, too?
Hang a chair from each decade from the ’20s to ’70s on your living room wall to create an instant collage.
- Display mismatched lamps.
A coordinating set of lamps is great for creating a series of mismatched rooms, like a living room, dining room and foyer.
- Try a faux fireplace.
Some people swear by faux fireplaces (I don’t, but that’s just me). You don’t have to go all out with the fake logs and fire itself if you’re thinking about using this trick in your home, but something simple like burning candles or tiki torches will look great on your wall.
- Add a Moroccan rug.
Even if you can’t make an entire room feel Moroccan, you can still add to the mood with a simple rug. Bazaars are great places to find rugs cheap and secondhand.
- Use mismatched throw pillows.
Mismatched pillows can give your home a funky, eclectic feel — and that’s exactly what you want when you style your living room.
What’s Your Favorite?
Do you have any other bright ideas that make your living room feel more unique? We’d love to hear them! Let us know in the comments below!