Home Decor Made Simple: 40 Ways To Tidy Up A House’s Interior Design

The internet has given us many dreams and life goals of attaining beautiful homes with impeccable interiors designed by the most prestigious interior designers. But, setting aside the fact that this sort of dream is pretty much like a Wattpad fantasy these days, making a house feel like a home is no easy task.  

It takes time, effort, and a serious amount of creativity to create a unique and special home environment that caters to your tastes and needs. However, even if it takes hard work, this overhaul doesn’t need to be particularly expensive, despite what you might think about the costs of upgrading a home’s interior design.

Home design isn’t always affordable, but for you, dear readers, we’ve found the best ways to spruce up your home without breaking the bank.

DIY Marble

These days, home decor and interior design are all about embracing that minimalist vibe. It’s not just a niche preference anymore; it’s one of the most popular design themes. And what do we all know screams minimalist setup? White. Marble. Everywhere.

But not everyone can afford to drop tens of thousands of dollars and buy all marble minimalist white furniture. So what can we do? Buy white marble contact paper! This inexpensive and durable covering can turn any piece of furniture into a minimalist accent piece.

Get the Rod

Want to make your home look more put together and always ready to receive guests? One of the easiest ways to go about it is a thing you can do in one night: dealing with cable management of your home appliances.

Your TV is one of the biggest devices you have in the house. With it comes the many power and display cables. A great way to get those wires out of the way is as simple as running all your wires through a spare shower curtain rod and propping it behind your TV.

The Ol’ Router in Book Method

Ever wondered what people do with all the old and unreadable books they have in their homes? You likely have some, too. Some ancient relics from your gran’s youth, or even her gran’s days, that, over time, have become too moth-eaten and yellowed to read.

Well, we have a solution for you! Those old books have character, but they also have VERY sturdy hardcovers. Simply take out the pages of the book and use the hardcover as decor. Hide your router in the book, and your room will have an erudite vibe.

A Pop of Color

When we say we like some color in our lives, we don’t mean to say that we enjoy being bombarded by colors, textures, and patterns from every square foot of our living space. We mean to say that we like some color accents on our drawers and things like that.

Unfortunately, many furniture manufacturers often have a “go big or go home” approach to drawers. They’re either a solid color or absolutely stark white; no in between. We do have a fix for that, though. Get a paintbrush and paint the sides of your drawers for that perfect pop of color.

Vintage Flower Vase

Cottagecore aesthetics and lifestyle are all the rage nowadays. The aesthetics come with some pretty hefty lifestyle changes if you’ve lived a somewhat muted lifestyle before. For example, you’ll need a lot of dainty tea and coffee, and you’ll have to drink them in a mushroom-shaped cup with flowers everywhere.

But what if you’re not a tea drinker and just bought some vintage tea sets for the aesthetic? Fear not; everything can be repurposed. The small and adorable tea kettles that go with the cottagecore aesthetic are perfect little flower vases to decorate your home.

Put a Scarf On It

Thrifting is becoming less of a need-based activity and more of an ever-growing hobby these days. Vintage designs and items are back in style, and it’s the perfect time to spruce up the home decor to reflect the trending aesthetic.

A great way to do that is by hanging a decorative scarf or blanket on your bed’s headboard. This upgrade instantly changes the vibe of the room. And the great thing is that this is the perfect time to make a thrift store run and pick out the best blanket for your needs.

Jazz Up Your Doors

If you’re thinking of changing the vibe of your living space, the doors are one of the consistently difficult things to revamp. The furniture you can swap out, walls you can paint, but the doors are often overlooked for different reasons.

Who has the time, energy, and money to take the doors off their frames and change them every time you’re struck with interior design inspo? Fear not! Doors only need a little bit of love to reflect your taste. You can always paint just the sides for a little variety!

Window Shopping

Significant changes to your home decor can be quite expensive and take a lot of your time. Those are the reasons why most people simply choose to keep postponing the big home overhaul instead of creating a space that they feel satisfied with. 

No worries, keep reading because we have a budget-friendly solution for you! Give your bedroom a timeless and open feel by using an old window in place of your headboard. It’s an instant change and bonus points if you put wallpaper behind it and make it look like an actual window. 

Free Table 

Young adults, cast your minds back to the time you all bought your very first ironing board. This item is considered a very “adult” accessory to have, and it supposedly makes you feel responsible. Every home needs an ironing board, right?

Now, another thing you’ll remember is how flimsy and useless those ironing boards were for actual ironing, and the fact that you stopped using them after a few months. Not to worry, these boards make for great side tables. Just be sure to balance the decorations properly on them, though.

Ladder No Longer

What do we say when you’re bored and home alone? Do some DIY! A good repurposing project is perfect for getting you out of that unproductive funk, and you always get something worthwhile after your efforts. You can even do something like this shoe rack.

The next time you’re feeling creative, use an old ladder and turn it into a shoe rack! All you need is the ladder, paint, and some planks, and you’re good to go. One lazy afternoon is all it takes to get this rustic shoe rack ready.

Redo the Lampshades

When we think of repurposing things, we don’t always think of lampshades, especially when it comes to house decoration. But you’ll be pleased to know that these items can be surprisingly versatile and very useful for customizing your living space.

The best part is that you don’t even have to do much to achieve a visible change. You can quickly upgrade the vibe of your room using your old lampshades. Paint the inside the color you want, and, boom, they’re now aesthetically pleasing and will also work as mood lighting.

It’s all in the optical illusion!

If you have a friend who’s an interior designer and you’ve visited their home, you probably noticed that they live in, more or less, the same area as you do and your houses are the same sizes. Yet, you can’t help but think that their house looks more spacious.

The answer is simple: they have a clever way of decorating their home. You can make an illusion of having more space than you do with a straightforward step. Just place your window curtains wider apart and the rods higher on the wall to make the room look more spacious.

The “Take It Easy” Paint Job

What about the people who want to give their homes a fresh new look but are too lazy to do anything? It’s not wrong to dislike things that take more than a few days’ work. But don’t worry; we also have the lazy home decorators in mind.

We’re happy to help you get your home looking prettier without putting in a lot of work. A quick and easy way to do that is to paint the walls partially and in a different color. And just like that, you’ve got a low-effort makeover!

Protection from Landlords

A budding interior design aficionado has to jump many hurdles before confidently saying they’ve done an excellent job decorating their homes. Your landlord is one of those hurdles. Not all of them take kindly to drill marks on the walls.

It would be unrealistic to tell you to move apartments until you find a landlord you click with. Fortunately, the internet has a solution to all of our problems. Use command hooks to put up curtain rods, paintings, racks, and anything else. You’ll do no wrong by using this hack.

Expand Your Pantry…Literally

All those beautiful and enticing home organization videos are bound to affect us. Things just look so put together and efficient! Suddenly, everyone wants to organize their cabinets using plastic or metal organizers and artisan glass containers with label stickers.

If you don’t have any of those on hand, though, you don’t need to worry. The road to organizing is arduous, but you can start by taking baby steps. A great way to revamp your pantry is to use drawer organizers to separate items.

Make Your Doors Fancy

A thrift shop or yard sale can yield many treasures that you can use to build up your home decor, even if you don’t know you need it yet. It’s best to keep the pretty trinkets handy for whenever you’re ready for a change.

Take medallions, for example. They look amazing on a mantelpiece or in a frame, but there’s a better way to use them. Replace your door handle with a medallion to add a glamorous look to your home. It doesn’t get any easier than that!

Utilize Every Space

Houses can be…a mixed bag. Unless you built your house from scratch based on your own design, you probably live in a house that leaves you with some questionable layout to work with. A recurring occurrence in most homes is a nook or crevice behind doors and under stairs. 

The good news is that you can customize that space however you like with some imagination. For instance, you can turn that nook into a shoe rack. A hanging shoe rack fills up the space beautifully and minimizes clutter in the room.

New Age Macaroni Art

Remember when macaroni art used to be a thing? Aunties from all over would bust out their elbow macaroni, glue, and paint so they could create adorable vases and bowls. What if we told you you could use pennies the same way?

It’s time to grab that piggy bank you never broke and use it to create something special. Take the old decorative pieces you were going to throw out and decorate them with pennies. This way, you can turn them into a punk, brassy line of decor. 

Brighten Up The Bathroom Floor

We all love a good soak in the bathtub after a long day. Aromatherapy candles, bath bombs, and essential oils – what else could we ask for? But have you ever considered that your bathroom might need some loving as well? We didn’t think so.

Thankfully, there’s a very straightforward way to change up the look of your bathroom. All you have to do is paint the floor! With tiling and walls meant to take some water damage, it’s best to focus on the floor for the paint job. Also, it means there’s less to do!

Softer Carpets = Comfy Home

Carpets add a real homey feel to your house. They’re far more inviting than spotless marble flooring or genuine stained wood paneling. But the issue is that, unless you’re shelling out thousands of dollars, you can’t get an excellent soft cushioning carpet that reflects your style. 

Say you already have a carpet at home. You bought it and could never bring yourself to have it laid for that reason. The answer to your problems is very convenient: carpet padding. Inexpensive and abundant, this cushioning layer beneath your carpet will stop it from collecting dust and give a luxuriant feel. 

Stay Frosty

One of the dream lifestyles these days is to keep things fashionable and high-end in lofts or high-rise apartments. Many videos on social media showcasing the breathtaking views from up there have not helped. It’s what all of us want right now. 

But privacy is a huge issue in such apartments. To ensure that you get breathtaking views, you need to have huge open windows, but they aren’t exactly private. Thankfully, a little dab of cornstarch paste and translucent lace can give you DIY frosted windows!

Lamps and Mirrors

There are many tricks you can use to give the illusion your room is bigger. You can place the curtain rods high up on the wall to make it look like your room has a high ceiling. You can paint the room to make the space seem roomier. And the list goes on.

Mirrors are a powerful tool to utilize if your goal is to maximize the space of your room or at least give the perception of it. So, a great way to make a room look bigger and brighter is by placing a lamp right in front of a wall mirror.

Dress Up the Closet

Need a nice full-length mirror to take those trendy OOTD shots? Don’t have a place to put it? Fear not, dear reader, because we have the perfect solution for you! You don’t need to waste money on a fancy mirror stand that matches your aesthetic. 

You can kill two birds with one stone by mounting the mirror onto your closet door. Not only will you save space and get a full-length mirror whenever you’ve finished putting together your look, but you’ll also completely change the look of your closet and make the room feel bigger.

Double or Nothing

A stereotypical scene in all movies and shows that feature wealthy households is that they all have large, billowy curtains. Is it for dramatic effect? Are they trying to symbolize wealth? We’ll never know, but we have to admit that it sure looks good!

Thankfully, you don’t need much money to pull off this look. You likely have another set of curtains in your home, so simply double up! You don’t need to buy two new sets of curtains; you just need more volume. 

Cover Them Up!

Rental homes or previously furnished homes often have badly-painted walls and the ever-present Questionably-Shaped Ceiling Lights™. You know what we’re talking about, right? You can definitely count on these lights to make even the prettier houses look dull and basic.

What were those old interior designers thinking? The good thing is, you can easily cover up these unfortunate ceiling lights within the space of a single evening. Our recommendation is drum lampshades, they’re easy to come by and inexpensive. Plus they gave a very modern look to the place.  

Tried and Tested

A good old-fashioned photo wall is one of the best and most widely used techniques for dressing up a blank wall. We hope that these walls will always stay in trend. They just add such a phenomenal personal feel to the place and reflect your aesthetic. 

One thing about photo walls is that they’re tedious to assemble. To make things interesting, you need frames of all shapes and sizes and to place them perfectly. We highly recommend using templates of your frames on the wall to see how everything fits before you start drilling holes.

Add Some Bling

Tiebacks are those belt-like things that keep curtains apart and open. They have the added benefit of providing a beautiful swoop to the curtain’s fall, which is very helpful for a luxurious look. You may already have tiebacks in your home or maybe you’re thinking of getting them. 

But we have a better idea. You can give your curtains an entirely new look by using old necklaces to hold back the curtains as tiebacks. Not only will this add a glamorous feel to your curtains, but you can also use this opportunity to repurpose old accessories you’d have never used otherwise. 

Add Some Trim

If you want to highlight the contour of an accent piece or make it stand out, you can always use nailhead trims. We highly recommend this technique if you are fond of adding some glamour and shimmer to your home. 

The best part about nailhead trims is that you can apply them to various household furnishings and products. Chairs, coffee tables, sofas, cupboards, and even headboards can be customized this way. So, try it out and see if it works for you!

Cable Management

Another cable management hack is coming your way! No one likes dusty wires snaking all over your floor, but they’re essential for the TV and router to work.  A shower curtain rod may not necessarily work for those cords behind tricky pieces of furniture.

An adhesive cord is a lifesaver when it comes to tidying things up. If you don’t have a lot of wires, you don’t need a curtain rod or a PVC pipe. An adhesive cord is all you need to keep the cables off the floor and out of the way.

Hang It Up

Life is about taking things easy and figuring out the best possible method to do our daily tasks. That’s how we got our phones and cars and electrical appliances. So why don’t we make the little things easier as well? 

We hang up things like toilet paper for easy access and convenience, so why can’t we do the same for our plastic and foil wraps? They’re much easier to store that way and more convenient to use by a wide margin. Try it out for yourself!

Keep Your Cables Boxed

Until the blessed day comes when our entire lifestyle is wireless, we’ll be plagued by wires and cables everywhere. Sometimes when there aren’t any nooks to stuff the cords in or tables to hide them behind, we have to get creative. 

A stylish storage box is an excellent option for hiding wires and extensions that are just a pain in the neck. Grab one of the empty boxes you probably already have around the house, poke a small hole in it, and tuck the cords away.

Make It Rustic

Not everybody wants their homes to look super futuristic and hyper-modernized at all times, even if we like the minimalist look every now and then. Many still prefer the homey and rustic look. The solution, therefore, is to mix the two styles to reflect your tastes. 

For example, to hang a mirror on your wall, all you need to do is use some rope. The concept is fantastic for a bathroom, but you can apply it anywhere in the house. You’ll see that, without spending much money, the room will quickly look a little more rustic.

The Handle Switch

Adding color accents to household things like furniture and decor may not seem like the most drastic of makeovers. But trust us, you will honestly feel the difference. If you are redecorating or renovating your home, never forget the power of color accents.  

Take your dresser or side table as an example. Consider replacing a couple of the white knobs with brown or black ones; the piece of furniture will immediately look different. By simply switching out the knobs, the dresser’s appearance will be completely transformed, and you’ll save money!

This is not hard at all

You’ve probably seen glass containers storing lots of wine corks. These are wonderful decorative items for your household. They demonstrate how much you love wine and also show that you’re a very classy person who only drinks the finest of wines. 

But filling that vase up if you haven’t been collecting the corks can be challenging. What you can do is use some deception. Put an empty bottle of wine in the jar. It’ll take up most of the space. Then, you just have to place the remaining wine corks inside the bottle to conceal it. 

Best Soap Hack Ever

This one is not just a want; it is a need. If you’re able to pull off this upgrade, you’ll be forever thankful for putting in the extra effort to make your life easier for years to come. We’re talking, of course, about building your own dish soap refill. 

Connect a lengthy plastic tube to the built-in soap pump in your kitchen. You can get the tube at one of the home improvement stores in your neighborhood. After that, you won’t need to refill the soap for months, especially if you buy the dish soap in bulk.

Budget Friendly Curtains

As we’ve already established, curtains are a costly investment, which is ridiculous because they’re essentially massive cuts of cloth that you hang up from the wall. But the fact remains that once you get a set of curtains, you’re less inclined to change them out for some variety because they’re so expensive. 

You definitely don’t need to buy brand-new curtains if all you want is to add some texture and color to your home. In fact, you can use a duvet cover you already own and cut it in half so you can use it to make DIY curtains instead of having to purchase a new one.

Add A Key Cabinet

Who likes getting up every single morning and starting a house-wide hunt for their keys, which we tossed goodness knows where the previous night? Some people are more organized than most and have a box or bowl for keys, but we have a more permanent solution. 

All you have to do is make space in a tiny cabinet and dedicate it to holding the keys. Since walking all the way to another room can make you feel too lazy to utilize it, our advice is to place it near the front door.

Repurpose Office Supplies

We don’t know about you, but we’ve never truly understood the actual purpose of file holders. Okay, they hold files, but has anyone ever used them for that purpose? These items are becoming especially rare now that we can store files on a computer.

We have a better idea. Everyone has that one cabinet of cleaning products that’s in constant disarray, so why not organize it? Attach the file holders inside the cabinet. Then, you can fill the holders with whatever you want, such as cleaning products, zip-top bags, foil, etc.

Get Some Legs Under That Sofa

Your sofa set is, without a doubt, one of the most expensive pieces of furniture in your home. Sofa sets can range from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars. Hence why buying a new sofa set is often out of the question if you’re redecorating your home. 

If you’ve already made that investment once and don’t want to go through it again, here’s a useful hack. Change the couch legs and you’ll instantly get a refreshing and enhanced look. If you use wooden legs, the difference will be even greater and you’ll love the new look.

This Should Have Been Obvious

This one’s going to be a little bit embarrassing to recommend. It’s such a straightforward fix that it’s insane no one thinks about doing it more often. Refilling our cushions is one of those simple things that seem completely logical but we often forget to do. 

Instead, we just let the cushions sag and turn to mush over the years, and when it gets too much, we throw them away. So, go ahead and refill them all for a change, and you’ll immediately see that the couch will get a different feel.