How to Decorate for Spring on a Budget
Looking for ways to decorate for spring on a budget? Here are tips for when you are decorating on a budget. Decorate your home for spring tastefully without spending money. Creating a beautiful home with seasonal decor is easy when you follow my lead. I hope you will enjoy these budget friendly decorating ideas.
Today I am sharing some of my favorite and very affordable spring decor ideas that I made through the years. Every project is simple, inexpensive and often quite minimalistic. Every one of them is a great way to create a light, bright, beautiful home that is ready for spring and Easter. Let’s decorate our homes for spring together.
5 General Tips for decorating on a budget
After winter we are all longing for spring and to bring a bit of light and ease to our decor. Yet in the new year budgets are often tight and free time to spend on creating lots of decor from scratch is often in high demand. So let me share some spring decorating ideas (that work well for Easter too) that can all be done on a small budget and that are so easy, that you don’t need a lot of time either.
Tip 1: Use what you have
This one almost needs no explanation. Using items that you already have is the first step in budget-friendly decorating. Be creative and see things in a new light. A flowery tea cup can be a candle holder, your pretty milk jug can be a vase and that yoghurt bowl is perfect for holding some flowering bulbs. Shop the house to create the look. We can get so used to our own decor that we become blind to its possibilities. Maybe you already have an (outdated) wreath somewhere. Bring it out and hot glue some dollar store Easter eggs to it, craft a nest from moss and cut a pretty butterfly out of colorful paper. Voila! You have an almost instant spring wreath that is pretty and homemade.
Tip 2: Use what you can get for free
In spring nature starts to sprout and blossom. Just take a walk in your garden or local park and carefully cut some pussy willow branches. Or find some branches that are about to start having leaves. That fresh green is just wonderful. Or maybe you can find some shrubs that you can force to start blooming inside. Bringing nature in, is one of my favorite ways to decorate with the seasons. A carefully arranged little posy of flowers posed on a stack of books on your coffee table can already be so satisfying and make your home feel finished and pretty.
Tip 3: Use and reuse
Spring is the time when you can get forced bulbs for very little money. Bring them inside to enjoy them in your decor first and then replant them outside in your garden or patio containers so you can enjoy them year after year. Spring decorating becomes an investment in your future home decor that way.
Spring is also the time of year when yardsale season starts, thrift stores bring out the seasonal decor and antique markets everywhere pop up. Go hunting for new decor and bring it home for a steal. Don’t forget that even the most outdated piece of (someone else’s) junk can become a treasure with a bit of imagination and some TLC.
Tip 4: Soft furnishings in spring
Don’t forget about the fashion for your home. Nothing is easier than to switch out some pillow cases, replace the wool blanket for a lighter throw and replace your table runner with one that is suitable for spring .
If you don’t have ready made seasonal pillow covers or throws than don’t forget that you can wrap a pillow in a shirt or pretty scarf, a striped towel can be a table runner and a piece of fabric from your stash can be draped over the sofa. Just tuck and fold, pin and stitch something together, no one will be any the wiser and it perfection is so overrated.
Tip 5: Keep it light and minimalist
To me spring means bringing back in light, and airiness and spaciousness. Maybe the best decorating tip for spring that I can give you is to remove stuff. Put some of your decorations away, leave some surfaces clear and make room for new good things to come into your home and life. No better time for a bit of minimalist decorating than in spring. And applying some minimalism in your life is about the best budget protection there is.
Budget spring Idea: Decorate with Bulbs
Using bulbs in your spring or Easter decor is a great idea. The garden centers are full with bulbs that have been forced to start blooming right now. If you water your bulbs a little and give them some TLC they will bloom for you beautifully.
I always put the bulbs outside in a shady spot when done blooming and let the green wilt away (that is how the bulb stores energy for next year). Once the green is wilted away I plant the bulbs in my garden. I have seen them pop up many a spring after that.
Now isn’t that a great affordable idea for spring: reuse your spring decor in your garden!
And next year….
Dig your bulbs up and use them inside once more…
You can keep the bulbs in the little containers they come in. As I did when I replanted them in numbered terracotta pots and added some moss to cover the soil. Or you can use a big bowl, soup terrine or serving dish and make a big statement piece like the one below.
If your want to give your humble bulbs a decorating upgrade you can place them under a dome or cloche. Long time ago I showed you how to make a chicken wire cloche and used it in my spring decor. Making a chicken wire cloche like this is easy and you only need a little remnant of wire.
Click here: Chicken wire cloche DIY to see how I made this cloche
I love decorating in blue and white especially in the light and warmer seasons of spring and summer. Matching the colors of the china with the colors of my bulb flowers that made it all the more better. This blue and white bulb decoration is still one of my favorites.
Easy Spring Wreaths
What is home decor without a good and proper wreath? Not much in my book. When it comes to budget ideas for decorating your living room in spring, I think it doesn’t get much better than a homemade wreath. I have used twig wreaths on many occasions in my decor. I think they always look great, are so easy to change through the seasons and you can make a twig wreath for free yourself.
Once you have a nice twig wreath to work with it is so easy to make a version for your spring decor. I have three different variations of twig spring wreaths in this post. For the first one I simply glued some little easter eggs to the wreath. By repeating the color scheme and using items that had the same rustic look, I created a quick and easy Spring mantel with the twig wreath as focal point.
If you love this spring mantel idea you will surely enjoy this collection of 31 amazing spring & easter mantel decorations.
My Juju hat knock off feather wreath is one of the most popular posts on my blog. I think a feather wreath works wonderfully for spring. It reminds us of birds that are nesting. And the soft texture is as cuddly as a little lambs fur.
This twig wreath received an upgrade with some simple ‘silk’ flowers from the dollar store. Now this fun spring wreath can easily move into summer with us and serve us for many months.
Twig wreath with white flowers for Spring
Can you believe this is the same homemade twig wreath that I showed you earlier with the easter eggs. Yep that is how easy it is to transform a twig wreath. For this variation in white I added extra bunches of white sticks and lots of white decorations that came from the after Christmas sales. I made this wreath a couple of years ago and I kept it and moved it with me. And looking at it now, I still love it and might just give it another round in my spring home decor this year.
Free Spring decorating: Use leaves and branches
If you have access to a garden you are very lucky. At this time of the year, the garden is such a good resource for decorating items. Some branches that are just about to start growing leaves can be enough for some nice cheap spring decor. If you can find pussy willows, or fruit blossoms all the better. But in any case bring in some of the lush, fresh green and sigh a big relief of joy: spring is here.
Apple blossom in very simple glass containers. Doesn’t get much easier or more frugal than this.
Faux greenery with matching botanical prints
If you don’t have access to a garden or park, or can’t go out to clip some greenery than using some faux greenery works very well too. Finding artificial flowers and leaves has never been easier and even the very cheap ones are starting to look almost real. Of course the beauty of using fake flowers and leaves is that you can reuse them many times over and really make them last.
This quick and easy Easter decor is another example of multi purpose decorating. The small Easter eggs are either wood or stone, so they can be reused many years in a row. I added some shells, straw balls and sea stars from my summer decorating stash and placed it all in a simply wire basket. If I replace the eggs with more shells, change the green leaves for some nicely colored flowers and add a piece of (faux) coral this will work wonderfully in my summer decor as well.
Affordable Spring decor: decorate with flowers
I couldn’t leave you without this last tip. Because bringing in fresh flowers is a good idea in any season. Of course you can use free flowers from your garden, if you have one. But even the simplest grocery store bouquet can work if you give it a little extra oomph and wow factor.
One simple, small bouquet becomes a shining centerpiece if you place it in front of a mirror. Or even better, use layered mirrors for even more wow factor. The mirror makes the bouquet look twice as big. And of course the mirror also reflects light around the room which is so nice this early in the year.
A plain old pitcher with some cherry blossoms can be the best part of your mantel decor if you pair it with some decorations from other seasons. In this mantel I pulled together disco ball ornaments from my Christmas stash and coral pieces that I normally use in my summer decor. It is an unexpected combination and a creative use of things that I already owned, but this spring mantel decor is still one of my favorites of all time.
One very small bouquet of tulips becomes a statement mantel if you separate them in different bottles. The fact that tulips hardly ever stay up straight but continue to grow in their vases, gives this tulip mantel decor just that extra bit of flair. Really, if you can only afford one small bunch of flowers, than displaying them like this will give your the most bang for your bucks.
Here is one more example of how you can make only a few fresh flowers work in your home decor. For this project I attached rings to little bottles and strung them to a line. Only a few flowers are needed in this tiny vases and yet the whole setup looked like a million bucks. Check out the link above for the instructions on how to make these hanging bottles yourself.
Rustic spring decor
I hope you enjoyed my collection of ideas for spring decorating on a budget. As I was selecting old projects to be included in this post I realized that a lot of my spring and Easter decorating could be characterized as rustic spring decor. The twig wreaths, my use of crates and repurposed bottles, the muted colors and the (chicken) wire accessories, all have a bit of a junk-style, rustic nature. I really like that. When you keep your background muted and when your containers are undemanding, then the lusciousness of new greenery really stands out. And the delicateness of budding blossoms is just the perfect contrast to more rugged and rustic materials and colors.
I hope you liked my affordable spring and Easter decor and would love to hear how you decorate your home for the season (on a budget or otherwise).
You would do me a great favor if you would share this post on your favorite social media. Mwah! a kiss from me to you.
Heel mooi allemaal Marianne
Dank je wel! Fijn je hier weer te zien. Dikke kus!
I’m a homebody, too, so I don’t mind being quarantined. But, I think I have a low level bit of depression. I don’t want to do anything, so I sit at the computer all day. I’ve got to get into the craft room, clean it up and start creating!
Sorry to hear that you are not feeling well. Take your depressed feelings seriously and take good care of yourself. Maybe just make yourself start every day, you don’t have to do much in your craft room but just start somewhere with something. And make sure your time at the computer is filled with uplifting things, stay away from all the news.
Take care dear Fonda!
What a fresh take on Easter decorations!
Such great ideas! I especially loved the tip of putting a bouquet of flowers in front of a mirror to make it appear bigger! We just had our floors refinished so the budget is a bit tight right now, but I want so badly to start incorporating spring into my home. I’m so glad I found your post, I now have an idea of where to start!!