5 Ways to have Lovely Interiors without breaking the bank

Are you refreshing your interior on a budget? Many of us have hang-ups about spending large sums of money, and feel like we can’t have or don’t deserve lovely things. Perhaps you feel those are the reserve of wealthier people than you, or simply that your budget won’t accommodate any luxuries at all. Here are my top tips for getting high-end quality without breaking the bank. 

1. Buy humble, not inferior

Nothing cheapens a room faster than fake materials, by which I mean things that are made to look like things they aren’t. Laminate and vinyl flooring made to look like wood or stone, goldy-looking metals made to look like brass. It’s not a case that all synthetic materials are bad – for example quartz worktops take natural stone and improve on its natural properties by making it stronger, more durable and more resistant to stains. However, materials which are made to look like something they’re not are rarely realistic and often look much cheaper than their price-tag. Instead of faking something, choose a lower-priced material such as using calico for curtains with a beautiful trim instead of an expensive patterned linen. If you can only afford vinyl flooring for your kitchen, get solid-coloured vinyl tiles and lay them in a checkerboard pattern. This looks chic where a marble-effect vinyl would have looked cheap. 

Venetian red squares vinyl tile by Harvey Maria

2. Reuse to free up budget

In my kitchen I have two taps – one in the pantry where we do our washing up, and one for the small barman’s sink on the island which we use for cooking. Rather than buy two lower priced taps, I asked our plumber to refit our old tap into the pantry so that I could double my budget for the other tap. The pantry tap is brushed nickel, not my preferred finish, and doesn’t have the pull-out function I would have chosen if buying new. However, this was a compromise I was happy to make in order to free up enough budget to buy an unlacquered brass tap for the island. This has really elevated what is otherwise a low-budget kitchen, and leads on to my next point - 

3. Invest in your touch points

I’ve written about this before but it’s the number 1 rule for knowing where to spend and where to save for a home that feels more luxurious than the budget suggests! Taps, worktops, cabinet handles, sofa fabrics, door knobs and light switches. Spending £150 on a ceiling light and £200 on switches will create a more high-end feel than spending £350 on the light fitting and £20 on light switches. This is because you never touch your ceiling light and you view it from a distance, but you touch your switches multiple times a day. If you’re touching plastic, you’re reminding yourself you live in an average house. A metal toggle switch feels satisfying and says “this is a really lovely home”. 

Antique brass toggle switch by Dowsing & Reynolds

4. Save expensive items for small spaces

You can have beautiful things with a small budget, it’s just a case of allocating that budget wisely. If you have a 7m long living room, that’s not the place to use wallpaper as you’d need an awful lot! Wallpaper a smaller room such as a study or downstairs loo, as you will only need a few rolls. This way, you can buy a good quality paper (see point 1) instead of spreading your budget so thin that you can only afford something from a DIY store (the stuff of interior designers’ nightmares!). The same goes for beautiful rugs, which cost £1000s when they are living-room-sized. You may be tempted to buy a smaller one for your living room to keep costs down, but a rug which is too small for the space looks awful (it should fit under the front legs of your sofa and be no more than 15cm away from the front of a fireplace or sideboard). Instead, put a smaller rug in a smaller room. 

5. Buy remnants

I get pretty much all my designer fabrics on eBay. I set up alerts for designer fabric houses I really love such as Fermoie, and I never pay more than 50% market value (usually much less). Lots of curtain-makers sell their left-overs which are great for small things like cushions, and fabric suppliers sell longer lengths of excess stock or seconds. You can also buy curtains and blinds which are cancelled orders that already got made up – just make sure the measurements are suitable for your window. As for the large rug you need for your living room, you can buy carpet remnants from any local carpet shop and have the edge whipped to make a large plain rug. This looks particularly high-end if you have a sisal or jute carpet remnant, but generally costs much less than a ready-made rug. 

I hope that’s given you some ideas for how to compromise in all the right places to create a home that feels really special. I have many more tricks up my sleeve as well as discount sources, but I have to save something for my paying clients! If you’d like to work with me to create your dream home, do check out my new-look services, there’s an option for every budget!