Hello, friends! I’m back from Salt Lake City and am ready to get back to DIYing!! As you might remember, last Monday, I posted about how I lightened up my living room decor for spring with just a few new touches.
Click on the photo to see how I lightened up the decor in our living room for spring!
Today I want to share my favorite tips for easy, budget-friendly ways to lighten your decor for spring. I’ll start with small ways to lighten up and then move through the list to some big changes!
1. Change the pillows
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One super-easy way to lighten up a room is to change the accessories in the room. More specifically, an easy and budget-friendly change you can make is simply to change the pillows in a room.
I always crack up at that insurance commercial where the woman buys more pillows with the money she saves – because I kind of love new pillows! But just look at how much they brighten up our olive green sectional in our family room!
The best thing about buying some new pillows to refresh a room is that they are generally relatively inexpensive. You can find adorable pillows at Target or other “big box” stores, and Home Goods always has on-trend pillows and in every color!
In my living room, I bought new pillows for the couch and I don’t think any of them was more than $20!
2. Add flowers.
A great way to brighten up a room is with flowers. And even if you don’t want to buy live or cut flowers for your home (if you have allergies or you just kill them the moment they come into your house!), you can buy good-looking faux greenery and flowers for not much money.
Click on the photo to see how I turned an old window screen into a fireplace screen!
Those forsythia branches have been all over my home!
I love fresh flowers, too.
Click on the photo to see my dining room makeover!
Especially daisies. They make me smile! Trader Joe’s has great prices on fresh flowers, FYI.
3. Choose lighter fabrics.
In winter, I throw a blanket or quilt over every chair and sofa in our home, because I’m always cold!
But once spring rolls around, I put away the heavy quilts and blankets. A vintage wooden ladder is a great place to store them in the spring.
You can also replace heavy curtains with lighter-weight ones or lighter color ones. Lighter curtains means more light coming in, which means brighter rooms. Or change the slipcover on a chair or sofa for a lighter look.
4. Paint a piece of furniture a bright color.
Sometimes, just painting one piece of furniture a bright color can lighten the whole room. Check out how dark this storage chest was when I bought it:
Now check it out after I painted it a bright blue:
It’s nice to have something bright on the porch given the dark floors and the dark brick on the walls! And this project took less than a quart of paint, so it’s budget-friendly.
5. Paint the walls.
Paint is a great way to lighten a room. At about $25 for a gallon of paint (depending on brand), you can transform the look of a room for not much money!
Click on the photo to see how I brightened the kids’ bathroom with a gallon of paint!
If you don’t want to paint the whole room, try an accent wall or the trim. Just painting the trim in our kitchen white made it so much brighter!
Click on the photo to see the darker “before”!
You could also plant an herb garden in your kitchen:
What do you do to lighten your decor for spring in your home?
Do you love spring cleaning, too? If so, check out my cleaning posts here! (I love spring cleaning!)
A "recovering lawyer," I turned in my power suits for power tools and a life of DIY. I believe in merging old and new to make a house a home.
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