Upgrading your walls is the best decor trick if you live in a small space.
Decorating a small home can be a bit tricky. On one hand, you would probably want to make your place look as cosy as possible, but on the other hand, you would also want your apartment or house to look expensive and trendy. However, if you are lacking some square footage, your options for home décor might appear limited.
Fortunately, that’s almost never the case, because you know what doesn’t take up any extra floor space? The walls. Though they might appear plain and boring to you, just remember empty walls are filled with endless possibilities. The key here is taking advantage of this unclaimed space and making it your own by adding a small piece of your personality into your décor.
There are a lot of ways to include your personal taste in your wall décor without creating a gallery wall or putting up giant artwork and murals. Similarly, if you’re dealing with cramped space, you can do much more than just add mirrors to make your room look bigger.
While there is nothing wrong with any of these ideas, in fact, it is safe to assume they would never go out of style, there are a lot more DIY home décor projects you can choose from to upgrade your walls – that too on a tiny budget.
Affordable Ways to Upgrade Your Walls
Here are six creative DIY home décor ideas to upgrade your blank walls without spending a lot of money.
Invest in wallpaper art
Although hanging giant paintings on the walls will probably always be a part of the luxurious DIY home décor trend, you can go a slightly different route and instead use wallpaper in its place.
If you have a small room, you might want to paint your walls in a shade of white, which can make your décor look rather basic. However, adding a colourful and vibrant piece of wallpaper to your wall will not only make for an attractive focal point but also add value to the rest of your home décor.
While choosing which wallpaper to hang, choose something that would complement your furniture and upholstery. You can buy scraps of discontinued wallpapers on discount or order them online for cheap. You can even frame a big patch of wallpaper to give your house a trendy look.
Another option is to use different, smaller scraps of contrasting wallpapers and display them in different sized wooden frames. With correct lighting and strategic placement, this budget-friendly DIY idea to upgrade your walls could be a real showstopper.
You can also try spray painting your walls for a fresh look.
Set up a vertical garden
If you want to add colour and brightness to your room while simultaneously improving your environment, starting a vertical garden might be your best bet.
Since not all houses have gardens or lawns and apartments have enough room in their balconies for any big pots, you can instead hang potted plants on a blank wall to upgrade your entire home décor.
There are several ways to start your own vertical garden, though you first need to make sure the wall you have chosen receives sufficient sunlight required for the type of plants you want to grow. For instance, seasonal flowers generally require a lot of sunlight whereas succulents thrive in relative darkness as well.
For those who aren’t big fans of gardening, you can hang a few artificial plants on the wall to add some colour to your room. Moreover, you can even invest in dried flower branches, but bear in mind they might not be available everywhere easily and as pretty as they might look, they generally don’t last for longer than a few weeks.
Hang your favourite things
The best way to incorporate your personal taste into your wall décor is by displaying your prized possessions or beloved items for everyone to see. For instance, if you love playing the guitar and have a huge collection, you can hang these instruments on the wall of your living room.
Similarly, if you have a large collection of hats, vintage clocks, baskets, postcards, album covers, movie posters or scarves among other things, you can even display those on your wall – just make sure it doesn’t look too overwhelming.
This DIY idea to upgrade your walls won’t cost you much since you would be utilizing things that you already own. At most, you’ll have to pay for the hooks you’ll use to mount this stuff on the wall.
However, if you’re living in a rental and can’t drill holes into the wall, you can order stick-on hooks online for a very low price.
Create a bookshelf
Nothing can go wrong with you showing off your favourite books on your living room wall. If you love to read and have acquired a large number of books over the years, create a DIY bookshelf by adding shelves to an empty wall and filling them up with books.
This budget-friendly DIY home décor idea will not only help make your home look luxurious but will also serve as a storage space for miscellaneous items.
Reminder: Don’t fill up all the shelves with bulky books. Leave some empty space for decorative pieces, photo frames and small potted plants to brighten up the room.
Use a bright rug or flashy fabric
Here’s another budget-friendly wall décor idea: buy a bright rug and hang it on your wall instead of laying it out on the floor. This trick will not only add colour to an otherwise boring wall but also add depth to your room. If you have dark-coloured walls, choose a small pastel-coloured rug. Similarly, if you have walls in lighter shades, you can go for a bright-coloured rug that goes with the rest of your décor and hang it somewhere everyone can see.
If you are not a fan of hanging rugs on your wall, you can even choose some flashy fabric and stretch it over a large piece of wood or put a smaller piece into a glass photo frame to create modern wall art. However, while purchasing the fabric, make sure it is durable and a little difficult to stretch so it doesn’t end up hanging limply from the wall. Moreover, choose a fabric that won’t trap dust particles quicker than others.
Put up a giant map
For those who love travelling, this is perhaps the best way to fill up a blank wall without breaking the bank. All you need is a big map of the world that would cover up most of the empty space and a box of colourful adhesive pins or decorative thumbtacks.
If you have a long travel history, you can use thumbtacks to mark the countries and/or cities you have already visited. You can also use pins to mark the locations you plan to visit in the future or places that are on your bucket list. It is better to use different coloured pins to symbolize the places you’ve been to and the places you want to go to.
Of course, there are several ways to upgrade your walls without going over budget. The trick is to utilize the space well without going overboard with the decorations.
