9 Ways to Save Money on Small Apartment Decor Without Sacrificing Style
So you want to create a stylish apartment aesthetic, BUT you don’t want to break the bank. Then let’s talk about how you can save money on your small apartment decor without sacrificing style!
In this video, I’m giving you 9 ways to keep your decor budget on track with my inexpensive decorating ideas. From cheap decorating ideas for apartments, to creating your own art, to making moodboards, to the splendor of Target decor, I have you covered!
Just because you live in an apartment doesn’t mean you can’t create a stylish retreat for yourself - one that makes you happy every day. So let’s talk about how to uplevel your apartment styling without wearing out your credit card!
Video Transcript ↓
I’ve made some slight edits in the transcript below so that everything makes more sense in text form. But overall, this is almost a word-for-word dictation of what I say in the video. I’m a much better writer than this, I swear, haha.
One of the biggest things that keeps people from decorating their apartment is the fear of spending too much money.
But even though decorating your apartment is going to cost some money, there are ways to make it so it's not scary expensive!
So in this video I'm going to give you 9 tips that will help you save money on your decorating process so that it doesn't have to feel so scary.
And if you’re new to my channel, my name is Steffi and I’m the creator of the interior style blog Moda Misfit as well as the online course Small Apartment Styling School.
And you’re watching Living Pretty, the place for apartment styling tips! So if you want to get inspired with me every week, be sure to subscribe!
Also, have you downloaded my free Apartment Styling Handbook yet?
It's a bite-sized roadmap for decorating your apartment so that you can create a space you love - without feeling like you're stumbling alone in the dark. Because sometimes you just want someone to tell you what to do to decorate your apartment, right?
So download the FREE Apartment Styling Handbook for some extra help!
1. Inexpensive stores
So my first money saving tip is you can shop places like Target, TJ Maxx, and HomeGoods and put together a beautiful room.
My apartment is largely decorated just with things from Target, every one of my rugs are from Target, my coffee table is from Target, and a lot of my little decorative accents in here are from Target. My sparkly pillow over on my chair was $14 at Costco!
Also, look for your local thrift stores.
Wherever you live, sit down and do a Google search for some local antique malls and thrift shops!
If you watch this video of mine, which is a walk-through at a huge antique mall here in Seattle, you'll see firsthand from that video that you can find some really amazing treasures for very good prices.
So if you want to save money in your decor process, definitely check out those local antique malls, thrift stores, etc. There are so many options for finding cute decor for a great price!
2. Make a moodboard
My next tip for saving money on your decor is a big one, and it's one of my favorites… And that is to create a moodboard!
How many times have you spent money on a piece of furniture or decor, brought it into your space, and were disappointed by how it looked with the other things around it? Making a moodboard helps you avoid that.
It’s so easy to create a moodboard in Canva (a free graphic design tool that is super easy to use) just by taking images of the furniture and decor pieces you're thinking about buying and dragging them into a Canva document.
And to show you just how powerful moodboards can be and how they can actually manifest into the space, let me show you what my Small Apartment Styling School student Ella did with her moodboard.
After watching the moodboarding lesson in my Small Apartment Styling School course, Ella created a moodboard and then a few weeks later, she posted a photo in the students-only Facebook group of what her space looks like now...
Look at how Ella was able to take what she put in the moodboard and translate it into her space!
This is the power of establishing a vision in the beginning of your decorating process and then using a moodboard as a tool to make it happen. Because it allows you to visualize how things might look together and avoid wasting money on things that don't look good together.
3. Make your own art
Now, you might be thinking, “Uh, but Steffi, I'm not artistic! There's no way I could create my own art!”
But there are actually ways that, even if you don't consider yourself to be the artsy type, you can still create something that you can put on your walls that’s aesthetically pleasing.
For example, you can just go outside, take a picture of a flower with your iPhone, then use a photo editing app like VSCO or Snapseed, and you can make the photo you took look pretty damn good with one of these photo editing apps.
Then what you can do from there is upload it to a site like canvasdiscount.com and have it printed on canvas!
You can also use something like Canva, which is the program that I use to create moodboards, to create your own graphic design art, and then you can print that out, and voila - you have a piece of graphic art you created yourself!
So even if you don't consider yourself much of an artist, because of technology these days, you can totally create your own art and put it up on your walls.
4. Create a budget
So if you really want to stay on top of your decor spending and not be in the dark, I recommend opening up a Google Sheets or Excel document, listing out all the furniture and decor pieces that you want to buy, and setting an amount that you would like to spend on each. Then when you actually buy something, I would also track how much you actually spent.
In my online course Small Apartment Styling School, I actually have an entire budget spreadsheet template that my students use to track their spending. It makes it super easy, you don't have to fuss with creating a spreadsheet yourself.
But even if you don't join Small Apartment Styling School the next time enrollment opens up, you can still easily create a budget for yourself in something like Google Sheets.
And you can keep it super simple! The idea is to just have something to help you keep track of what you're spending your money on so that there aren't any unwelcome surprises.
5. Consider renting your furniture
Another way you can potentially save money on your apartment decor is to rent through a site like Fernish. It can be a really great option for some apartment dwellers, but maybe not for everyone, so it really kind of depends on your situation!
My boyfriend Kobe rented a lot of his furniture in his studio apartment. We did a studio apartment tour video of his space, so if you want to see what his rented furniture looks like, you can check that out!
And Kobee loved renting his furniture from Fernish. For him, it was a way to have nicer furniture without the financial investment up front.
So if you're someone who wants their furniture to feel a little bit more upscale in their apartment, Fernish could be a good option for you because they source their pieces from places like CB2 and Crate & Barrel - sort of that price range - and it's a great way to get those pieces without having to commit to them.
One caveat with Fernish is that they only deliver to Seattle and LA, so if you live in Seattle or La you might want to look into Fernish!
6. Prioritize your purchases
A solid way to save money, when it comes to pretty much anything, is to go in with a plan!
Sit down and prioritize: what are the first few things you need to buy an order to simply just be comfortable in your space? Then you can move on to buying other things from there.
I definitely recommend you download my Apartment Styling Handbook because that's basically a game plan for your apartment styling, and one of the pages in this 20-page handbook is an apartment shopping priority list.
These are the things I recommend buying first, because when you're decorating and furnishing an apartment, it can be very overwhelming. It's very easy to get “shiny object syndrome” and spend your money on things that aren't really an immediate need.
So I find if you just get focused and prioritize certain things first, everything else will fall into place more easily!
So here the things that you should prioritize:
A mattress so you have somewhere to sleep
A comforter and sheets so that you can sleep comfortably
A dresser and hangers so that you can immediately start storing your clothes away instead of having them sitting out in boxes
A desk and a desk chair if you're someone who needs a desk in order to work productively
A sofa because, again, you want to be able to exist comfortably in your space
Lighting (floor lamps, table lamps) so that you don't have to use the horrible overhead lighting. Good lighting is so important for making a space feel warm, cozy and inviting, so it should definitely be a priority!
7. Wait for sales
Another way to save money on your decor is to time your decor purchasing according to seasonal sales.
Home decor stores tend to have really good sales around holidays - Black Friday, after-Christmas sales, Fourth of July sales, Memorial Day sales - pretty much every phase of the year has a big sale, so try timing your decor purchasing around those sales.
This one takes a little patience because it means kind of waiting around until one of those holidays, but if you're really concerned about saving money on your decor, it's worth the wait!
This is another way in which the last tip about prioritizing really comes into play because if you prioritize your decor and get the must-need things up front, then that gives you some wiggle room for the rest of the decor in your space so that you can wait for these holidays and save some money.
And this leads me into my next money-saving tip…
8. Pace yourself
There is no rush! You do not have to make your apartment look amazing overnight. I’ve said it a million times and I'll say it again:
Every stylish space has to look shitty before it can be pretty.
It is physically impossible for you to pull an HGTV reveal on your space because this is reality and no space gets decorated that quickly, unless it's on TV!
Don't spend your money out of a fear of your space not looking good, because the truth is… your space will not look great for a bit. That’s just part of the process!
A big mistake a lot of people make is they buy decor without really putting a lot of thought behind it because they rush into it. So what happens is all those rushed decor decision add up, and they look around and they just don't really like what they've done with their space.
So instead of rushing through your decorating process, slow down, take a step back, take your time, and only buy things that truly resonate with you.
9. Accept the flaws
Perfectionism is a very expensive trait. I know that from experience! Here's the problem with perfectionism when it comes to decorating: since perfection is non-existent (it's like this mythical creature that you will never see and you'll never meet) your apartment will never be perfect.
So if perfection is your goal for your apartment styling, what happens is you keep throwing money at decor in this quest to achieve this mythical perfection, and before you know it, you've spent a lot of money on decor and your apartment still isn't perfect.
Because perfect doesn't exist. And then you keep spending more money and it's just this horrible cycle.
So in order to stop this from happening, you need to accept that your apartment is going to have flaws!
The moment you accept that your apartment does not have to be that perfect Pinterest aesthetic, you will be set free. And you'll stop spending money on decor that you buy just to try to live up to this idea of perfection.
So those were my tips for saving money on your decorating process!
If you're still wondering things like,
“How do I discover my personal style so that I can make these good choices for my decorating?”
“How do I become more confident in my interior styling choices?”
“How do I mix styles?”
“How do I actually arrange things in my apartment?”
Then I got you covered…
If you're wanting to dive deeper into learning about how to style your apartment step by step, that's where my online course Small Apartment Styling School comes in!
Small Apartment Styling School basically holds your hand through your styling process and tells you exactly what to do step-by-step, so by the end of the course you feel like you know your style, you know what to buy, and you know how to place it in your apartment with confidence.
Imagine living in an apartment that actually boosts your mood everyday and makes you feel welcome, and makes you feel a sense of belonging and being at home.
Just because you rent your space doesn't mean you can't own your style, and Small Apartment Styling School helps you do that!
My current students have been a raving about how helpful the course was for decorating their apartments and I am so proud of what they've achieved just after the couple months of being enrolled in the course!
Small Apartment Styling School will help you decorate your apartment step by step, including:
Figuring out your personal style
Choosing a color palette
Mixing different interior styles
Learning about the different interior styles that are out there and which ones might be a good fit for you
Arranging and accessorizing your apartment room by room - living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom.
All of this and more is in Small Apartment Styling School, so if you want to learn more and join the waitlist for the next time it opens for enrollment, click here!
For daily glimpses into my studio apartment life, you can follow me on Instagram @moda.misfit.
And for regular doses of apartment styling tips and small space decor inspiration, subscribe to my YouTube channel and hit the bell to be notified when a new video goes up every week.