Want to transform your small house into a sanctuary without breaking the bank? This article shares simple interior design ideas to implement today, proving that size doesn’t matter when it comes to creating a stylish and comfortable space on a low budget.
We all want spaces to feel like the ultimate Sanctuary, a place to relax and unwind, be inspired by, and be comforted in. The goal is to make the most of what is available without spending a lot of money to do so.
1. Purge, Declutter, Donate, and Edit
Before embarking on any type of interior design, whether or not the space is small or large, the first tip is always the same: Purge, declutter, donate, and edit, exactly in that order.
The Great Purge always starts with taking full inventory of everything in the home.
It’s best to start with the room that is used most or at least the one that has the most clutter. Sometimes this is a bedroom, closet, or bathroom. A good rule of thumb is to remove all of the items that haven’t been worn for over a year.
Decluttering has everything to do with cleaning off surfaces. If in the bathroom, declutter the bathroom countertop or maybe the makeup vanity area. Get rid of items that are no longer used or are past their expiration date. Remember that makeup and toiletries do expire.
Purging and decluttering is a really great way to assess needs to make room for the things that matter most. Some people purge and declutter their homes on a regular basis.
When something is no longer needed, begin to put it in a donation pile or have a donation box that is ready to fill up from room to room. There are donation services that will come and pick up boxes that need to be donated. It feels good because those items are being donated to a nonprofit organization.
Finally, after items have been purged, decluttered, and donated, it’s time to edit. Editing a space means stepping back and taking a really good look at the room. Sometimes taking a picture and looking at the picture helps. If there’s a corner that feels a little bit too heavy or an area where some decorative items could be removed from a surface just for the room to breathe, that’s exactly how the editing process should go.
While it’s great to be surrounded by all of your favorite things in the home, editing is really key. It gives those really special pieces a chance to be recognized, and some of the pieces that are not so special could be corralled into a more significant important gallery of some sorts.
This Gallery could be filled with frames that are installed right on a wall. The gallery could also be a collection of your favorite trinkets that are styled in a way that makes it feel a little bit more complete and a little bit more important.
2. Rearrange Your Furniture
The next best interior design idea for a small house with a low budget, which really doesn’t require any budget at all, is to rearrange your furniture. This is also known as the no-spend challenge.
Start with the living room. The living room might have three key pieces of furniture: a sofa, a coffee table, and a lounge chair. Think about rearranging the sofa, maybe flanking it on an adjacent wall or even an opposite corner where it’s sitting now. You’d be surprised at how you open up the space, or even try a configuration that has never even been thought of before.
Maybe try relocating that lounge chair to the corner of the bedroom. While in the bedroom, let’s take a good heart look at where your bed is. Is your headboard situated in the command position? According to the principles of funu, the command position dictates that when seated in your bed or lying in bed, you can see the door. It really just means that you are in command. You want to be able to see who’s coming in and out of that room without having your feet be pointed directly in front of the door. That’s considered a coffin position, the death position, and we don’t want that in funu.
If your bed is already in the optimum position, maybe you want to scooch it further away from the walls just so that you have enough room to make your bed every single day. Maybe you want to change the orientation of your dresser. If it’s on the wall that is right next to your bed, try placing it against the wall That’s opposite the foot of your bed, and you can also do the same with your desk or a little work area that you currently have in your bedroom.
You may not be able to rearrange all of the furniture in your dining area, but you might be able to rethink where you work from home. If you’re currently using your dining table as your work-from-home office situation, try using the living room instead. You’d really be surprised by how much more alive your space feels just by rearranging your furniture.
This is a no-spend challenge, so challenge yourself to not spend a single dime and kind of rearrange some of the big furniture pieces that you have in your home right now.
3. Restyle the Most Used Room
The next interior design idea is easy to do, especially after you rearrange your furniture. Now it’s time to restyle the most used room in the home. Often times this means the living room because it’s probably the first room that you enter in Once you walk into your home. Restyling the living room doesn’t take a whole lot of effort.
You just want to clear all of your shelves and all of the surfaces. If you have a bookshelf, you want to remove every single book from the shelves, all of your decorative items, all of the books. If you have additional surfaces in the home, let’s say a coffee table, a console, or the fireplace mantle, you want to pull all of the items off of your walls off of the surfaces and Corral them in just one specific area.
Once the room has a lot less decor and decoration, you’re almost coming back at the space with an editor’s eye. You want to really refine the look and think about how you want to recreate this vignette. Where’s the focal point? What is the dialogue that you want all of these decorative items to have with each other?
Once you restyle your space, you want to use the rule of thirds in design. The rule of thirds really just means you want to group items in odd numbers: threes, fives, sevens. You want to mix and match materials, something High, something low, something big, something small, something really organic like bringing the outdoors in with fresh Greenery and fresh flowers.
You don’t have to buy anything at all. We love to forage in our own backyards. If you live in an apartment, there’s probably plants of Plenty. You can go out there and snip a little plant. If your neighborhood allows you to do that, that’s awesome. If they don’t allow you to do that, you might cut off something that’s overgrown or kind of growing on the underside of a bush. You will notice once you bring all of this fresh new energy into your space.
4. Decant Exposed Products
The next best interior design idea for a small house with a low budget is to decant exposed products. This means decanting toiletries in the bathroom and kitchen products in the kitchen. Pretty much anything that you have out in display or you’re using as decorative purposes you want to put into a really nice clean bottle. In the kitchen, you want things to look really clean and really organized.
This also means decanting dish soap from its huge Costco bottle into a really beautiful glass Amber bottle. Everyday products should be discreet. You don’t want a lot of plastic bottles and graphics and labels littering countertops, so the minute that you decant all of these items that you buy at a big box store into non-descript containers, they just look so much more elevated as a result.
Take another look at your bathroom counter. If you have 50 different bottles on there that all look different, they’re all different colors, and they all have different labels, you can decant all of these bottles into the same matching set. Now what you’ve done is you’ve eliminated the visual clutter. The Clutter is still there. It’s just in decanted bottles that all look the same versus something that’s kind of all over the place.
5. Add a Table Lamp
The next best interior design idea for small houses with a low budget: You’re going to have to spend a little bit of money on this, but the benefit far outweighs the cost. It is to add a table lamp. This is such an easy solution to brighten up dark corners of the home or even add just a little bit of a moody Ambiance to a corner that you never even thought of.
You can do this with a really beautiful table lamp. You can also add in a floor lamp if you’re lacking a little bit of surface space. Adding a lamp is the easiest way for you to change the entire mood of a room. Even if you already have a lamp or a floor lamp in your house but you kind of want to change up the vibe, think about changing up the lamp shade for a totally new look.
If you want to add a lamp or a lampshade but you don’t have a plug nearby, there are rechargeable light bulbs. A lot of these light bulbs have rechargeable ports that you can literally just charge with a USB cable so simple so efficient.
6. Buy What You Love
The next best interior design idea is for small houses with a low budget is to buy what you love and only buy that. If you have a color that you love, it’s really easy to buy something in that color because you know you love it.
If you’re watching this channel, you might be tuning in because you want interior design tips. A really huge reason of why this design channel exists is because it’s trying to get you to figure out what you love in your home and kind of do more of that. A lot of it has to do with assessing your personal needs, the things that you need for your home and your family to function.
Let’s say you’ve got the function down, now how do we look for items that we love in a color, a shape, or form that follows the function that we need. If you’re going out shopping and you spotted a really beautiful pillow that you loved, you don’t really know where you’re going to put it, all you know is that you love it. Once you get back into your house, there’s going to be so many places for you to decorate this pillow with.
If you love the item, you will make it work no matter what. Here’s another way for you to discern if you actually love something or if you don’t. What you do is you fill the cart to your heart’s content. The trick is you don’t check out right away. You leave all of your items there in the cart, and by the end of the week, if you still remember it, you go ahead and buy it, and if you didn’t remember it, then all of a sudden hey guess what you didn’t really need it you don’t really love it.
Here’s another shopping Mantra that you can swear by: If you see a really beautiful item that’s still sitting on the rack, ask yourself, am I going to die if I don’t have it? Chances are you’re not going to die. But if you feel like oh my gosh, you’re going to die if you don’t have this item, then yes, you’re going to buy it, and that is how you know when you absolutely love something. If you love it you will make it work.
7. Get Personal
The last item on today’s list of the seven best interior design ideas for small houses with low budgets is to get personal. This is a segment that teaches how to tell your story with furniture and your personal belongings. How do we display our personal hobbies and our interests?
You decide on the layers that you want to share with the world or the layers that you want to personalize in your space. If you love to live surrounded by your things, as you travel from room to room in the home, you can tell exactly when you found this really beautiful frame that’s lining your wall.
The easiest way for you to personalize a space is with color because color has a visual impact that really resonates inside your core. The next time you’re out shopping for a big-ticket furniture item like a brand new sofa or new dining chairs, think about the colors that you love. If you have a small space or you’re only working with let’s say your own private personal bedroom, think of the interests that inspire you. It could be pop culture, it could be your favorite artists, it could be all of these little collectible trinkets that you love to put on display.
Think about a way for you to share your story through the way that you rearrange your furniture to the manner in which you display all of your collectible items. It’s great when guests walk into a home and they survey the land and they say they remember when you got that from so and so vacation or oh they remember when you wore that to D event. That the home tells its story and that guests actually feel connected to you and your home the minute that they walk in the space.
Even if someone isn’t really big on design, make sure that you have some of their favorite items on display as well. If you love to paint and you’re an artist, why not scatter all of your collections of prints all throughout the house. You can have a really beautiful statement piece behind the toilet in the bathroom. Think about all the wonderful ways that you can share more of your story and put your life on display.
Conclusion
In conclusion, transforming your small space into a stylish sanctuary doesn’t require a fortune. By purging clutter, rearranging furniture, restyling rooms, decanting products, adding lamps, buying what you love, and personalizing with meaningful items, you can create a home that reflects your unique story and inspires you every day, all while sticking to a low budget.
