Quality décor can make even a manufactured home seem like a unique oasis from the world. That’s what any home should be; but often people get bogged down in the details when it comes to decoration. They’re either too detailed, or too spartan. There’s always a happy medium—a balance to achieve.
Here, we’ll explore a number of ways you can cost-effectively and sustainably decorate your home. The approaches explored will bridge the gap between minimalism and maximalism—after all, just because you’re living minimalist doesn’t mean you’re sustainable. Similarly, just because you’re going the maximal route doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not.
While minimalism tends to suggest sustainability, it can be done in ways that are unnecessarily expensive. With maximalism, overt acquisition done strategically enhances value, and can lead to a variety of liquidations that increase on associated investments. Antique purveyors often take a maximal approach in a way that’s profitable.
Profitability is sustainable, and if you can fund decoration through careful purchase and sale of varying furniture items, or other things enhancing a home’s value, why not do so? At any rate, here we’ll explore a few options from either side of the divide. In all cases, sustainability is the aim.
1. A House Of Mirrors
Especially when it comes to small spaces, mirrors are very recommendable. Mirrors reflect light in a way that seems to expand how much illumination is inside a given room. Their reflections also give the subconscious a hint at more to see or discover. Accordingly, tiny rooms feel much larger.
Mirrored walls and ceilings reduce lighting costs and décor costs simultaneously. You can also find all sorts of mirrors for sale at flea markets or thrift stores. They’re relatively cost-effective when acquired cheaply at stores like Walmart as well. A bunch of “cheap” mirrors can be made into a larger reflective arrangement.
Maybe you put mirrors behind wardrobes in a room so it appears there’s more space as you walk by. Many creative things can be done which expand the sense of space, reduce electricity costs, and may even enhance home value. Installing larger, framed mirrors in a permanent way can make a home feel very qualitative to potential buyers.
2. Foliage Refreshment
A vine has a central point from which it grows. As it sends out tendrils, you can use them as décor in the corners of a room; or wherever you’d like to use them as an aesthetic enhancement. You don’t have to get a vine, though. There are all manner of house plants out there, and they grow as you water them.
The seeds, potting soil, pot, and water are an investment. However, keep a plant alive for a few years, and in terms of air quality, aesthetic augmentation, and sometimes even fruit yield, it’s worth that investment. Get some decent plants, hang them around the house, and get into the habit of watering them daily.
3. Family Pictures And Thrift Store Paintings
A really sustainable and smart decorative option is making the house you live in your home through memorabilia. Art projects your children have done, diplomas you’ve achieved, family photo albums—what sort of things has your family produced in an organic way? What things were you going to just…make anyway?
Family pictures, paintings, sculptures, and framed achievements are likely going to be in your house to begin with, so you might as well lean into their decorative potential. A photo album can be a fine piece of decoration for the living room, in the center coffee table, as a focal point between chairs.
A collage of schoolwork from your young ones might occupy a wall of the family room. Perhaps you use that wall to frame a variety of family photos, and intersperse similarly-sized paintings as accents. You can find some astonishingly beautiful prints at thrift stores across the country, and in flea markets.
You’ll find good things new in stores like Target or Hobby Lobby, but you’ll often pay three to a hundred times more for something that feels mass-produced to begin with. Going the thrift store route, you get more original pieces that bring about the same level of aesthetic enhancement. Mixed with family photos, there’s ample decorative opportunity.
4. Get Away From Carpet Flooring, Embrace Rugs
Carpets will get stained, and if they don’t get stained, they’ll get bogged down like the filter in a fish pond over time as dust particulates settle into the carpet fibers. They’ll become heavy, overladen with microscopic parasites, and could eventually even have a smell to them. If you can, replace carpets with tile, LVP, or wood flooring; whatever’s most feasible on your budget.
Have Your House, And Decorate It, Too!
Hard flooring, using things you would produce anyway as décor, indoor plants, and mirrors represent some notably cost-effective and sustainable decoration options for most homes. Large or small, with good décor, your home will be an oasis from the world. Tend that oasis properly, and its value will expand collaterally.
Also Read: Environmental Benefits of Interior Vinyl Wrapping
