Use What You Have To Decorate Your Home

I’ve received many emails recently asking me how to decorate with things you already have. This is such a great question! Today, I have smart and savvy ideas and tips for using what you have to decorate your home.

Using what you already have to decorate your home is easy, economical, and smart! The biggest thing holding us back is our mindset. We sometimes need to think outside the box a little and be willing to take a chance or learn something new.

Shop Your Home

When decorating your home with the decor you already have, it is most important to shop for your house! It’s the best way to find items that will look nice in other areas of your home! This works best if you have a consistent color palette and decor style throughout your home.

Make a list of what you have and where you might want to put the things on your list! It may sound like a bit of extra work, but it will pay off big time! Or better yet, take pictures of things you have to decorate your home and put them in files on your phone or computer.

Knowing which things in your home will look great used in new and fresh ways and which items won’t is decorating gold.

Decorating your home on a budget and using what you have is all about the thrill of the decorating hunt, my friend!

Accent decor or small items like throw pillows, table lamps, family photos in attractive frames, and faux greenery are examples of decor that can easily be moved to different rooms to give them a new look.

Be savvy and choose the items you already have carefully! Some can look better and are easier to incorporate into a room than others.

Give The Decor You Have A New Look

I love, love, love using the decor I already have in new and fresh ways. And I almost always tweak it in some way. Decorating your home with things you already have will give you an opportunity to rescue and restore your furnishings! 

Interior designers know paint is magical. Paint is my “magic” of choice when it comes to updating the decor in my home. A fresh coat of paint will give an old piece of furniture new life!

I’ve painted chairs, clocks, tables, pillows, legs of soft furnishings, curtains, buffets, garden stools, mirrors, coat racks, and more! And sometimes things get painted and repainted again.

Learn how to paint furniture. Start small, like a picture frame or a chair. YouTube has many great videos showing you how to use paint. 

Second to painting, slipcovering, and reupholstering works to change the look and livability of what we have. I’ve let fabric work its magic on accent chairs, sofas, benches, dining room chairs, and more!

Learn how to paint furniture. Start small, like a frame or a chair. YouTube has many great videos that show you how to use paint.

Second to painting, slipcovering, and reupholstering works to change the look and livability of what we have. I’ve let fabric work its magic on accent chairs, sofas, benches, dining room chairs, and more!

Use Books As Decor

Don’t let your books sit around collecting dust in their dust jackets! Put them to work. Use a little creativity and make them important decor items in your home.

Stack books as risers. Display your favorite books in a bookshelf or bookcase. Use books when you need a little filler decor. Show off books on your flat surfaces. People can’t help leafing through a coffee table book on a well-appointed coffee table. Books are fun ways to add your personality and preferences to your home.

A good book is more than something to read!

The Ultimate Guide: Decorating With Books You Have And Love is full of savvy and simple ways to use books in decor.

Move Furniture From One Space To Another

How about taking a piece of furniture or an accent decoration from one room to another? I do this a lot! Especially with accent chairs. Because the color palette and style of each room here at Tanglewood are pretty similar, I can easily change out furniture.

I also move around lamps, pillows, bowls, trays, side tables, drink tables, baskets, flowers, plants, mirrors, and more! I’ve even moved a living room sofa to our sunroom and a settee from our bedroom to the dining room. Taking furniture from one space and adding it to another will make a huge difference in a room.

We will talk about smaller items you have to use in fresh ways later in the post.

Divide and Conquer

If you still have sets of matching furniture in your home, I have the BEST tip for you: Break them up! Divide your matchy furniture up, and your entire room will look more beautiful and different.

Matchy-matchy is a hard style to update if you are not willing to break up the matched set.

I know many of you, like me, have purchased a dining room set. And you probably spent a fortune decades ago, right? If you love your set and the look of things that match, you can skip over this part.

But I have the answer if you are aching for a new look! You don’t have to replace all the furniture! Just some of it!

How To Rescue Matchy Matchy Furniture

Think about keeping a piece or two, maybe the bigger, most expensive piece, and replacing some or the rest of the set.

Here are some examples…

• In the dining room, keep the table, buy second-hand chairs in different styles and paint them all the same color, or paint the chairs you have all the same color and reupholster them (I did this)
• Use the bottom part of your china cabinet and get rid of the top. Now you have a buffet. If you are not using the displayed dishes, think about letting them go too. Maybe paint the buffet or refinish it.
• If you only have a matching buffet, paint it (I did this too)
• Let go of your head chairs and buy updated upholstered ones (I did this). Or use those chairs in another room.
• You can keep the sofa or the loveseat of a matching set in the living room, but not both. Maybe reupholster the one you keep. Then, buy two new chairs (or borrow them from another room in your home) to replace the piece you get rid of.
• If you have matching end tables, you might consider using one in another room in your home and replacing it with an updated floor lamp. End tables also work great as nightstands.
• Use end tables from the living room or family room in the bedroom and repaint or refinish them to work with your bedroom’s color palette.
• Use a long coffee table from your living room as a bench at the bottom of your bed. Make a padded cushion for the top of it to coordinate with what you have. (I love this idea)

Bring The Outdoors Inside

Outdoor items can look amazing inside! I often bring small indoor/outdoor rugs from my porch indoors and use them as accent rugs. They’re so pretty, and they add a punch of color to my neutral home.

The pom pom pillow in the image above is from my back patio. I often bring it indoors to put on a sofa or a chair. I’m such a fan of using my outdoor pillows indoors and planters and even my outdoor bench inside! Be creative!

A pair of side tables and a bar cart, all outdoor furniture, are permanent fixtures inside my home!

Bring in your outdoor furniture during the cold months and use it in your home.

Use Your Textiles In Creative Ways

If you are like me, you have lots of pillows, throw blankets, scarves, and blankets! People who love to decorate also love to collect textiles. There are plenty of ways to use them all over your home.

Here are examples of things you can do with textiles you already have:

• Cover a dining room or kitchen table with a sheet or decorative throw as a tablecloth.
• Use dishtowels as cute cafe curtains.
• Mismatch pillows for a perfectly imperfect look that is so popular right now
• Arrange throw blankets on a decorative ladder
• Layer several throws over the back of a sofa
• Use a tablecloth or blanket to upholster chair seats or a small bench
• Make pillows out of old tablecloths or curtains

Create A Focal Point

Use decor you have to create a focal point in your home. Create a gallery wall with photographs, art, free printables, collected paraphernalia, or other things that are personally important to you. Corral decor in a basket to create a show-stopper vignette. Style vases, urns, pots, and containers to create a focal point on a table by styling a real or faux flower arrangement in them.

Put what you already have to good use, and create a focal point for the room in your home.

Change Up Accents

We’ve been talking a lot about larger pieces of furniture, but accent furnishings are perfect for changing things up in your home. You can make little changes when you decorate your home with what you have, such as vignettes, lamps, mirrors, pillows, and throws, right now! And these changes have a big impact!

At the Tanglewood House, decor like urns, vases, baskets, pillows, and trendy items fly from one room to another, to the basement, and back almost daily!

Changing out small decor items in our homes is the easiest way to give a room a new look. Think about using items from one room to give them new life in another. This is such a smart way to decorate with what you have!

Just like you can give furniture new life by painting it or reupholstering it, you can do the same for accent pieces!

I am obsessed with covering books! My fabric of choice is burlap, but lately, I’ve been covering books with napkins. Yes, napkins. See How To Cover Books With Torn Tissue, another super fun and easy way to use books as decor.

Burlap books go with my style. They add texture to my decor and have such a nice uniform, unbusy look! I’ve also painted books too! And I can still use them! What a big decor win/win!

You can see how I cover books HERE and paint books HERE.

Burlap books go with my style. They add texture to my decor, and have such a nice uniform, unbusy look! I’ve also painted books, and I can still use them! What a big decor win/win!

You can see more ways to cover books HERE and paint books HERE.

Here is an old lamp I almost gave away to my kids. I gave it new life by using napkins and decoupage medium.

You can see this easy DIY HERE.

Think about giving things you love, like books, baskets, urns, and pottery, a new look with a coat of paint or covering them with something to work with your decor. Again, this is using what you have to decorate your home gold!

Take A Second Look At Your Window Treatments

Think about updating the drapes you already have. If your curtains are puddling on the floor, hang them higher by moving the curtain rod closer to the ceiling. This is the best way to make the curtains look fresher.

I recently moved the curtains in our bedroom into our dining room. This instantly made our dining room look happier and more attractive. You can see the curtains in the dining room HERE.

Edit What You Have In A Room

Sometimes, creating an attractive room is not about what you put in it. It’s what you can take out of it.

Most home decorators overdecorate. When you can’t figure out why a room looks tired, out of style, or off, it just might be that you have too much stuff in it. Try removing a few things. It’s a great way to make a room look less cluttered, more spacious, and updated. 

Facing A Hard Truth: Sometimes Something Might Need To Be Replaced

If you want a fresh look, an outdated or worn-out sofa you already have may not be the best choice if you want an attractive room. It is much harder to disguise.

Adding great pillows and throws will help, but a sofa is a big piece of furniture. And if it is upholstered in a patterned or bold-colored fabric, it might be very hard to use as is. It’s sort of like trying to put lipstick on a pig. Better to reupholster or get a new piggy!

The reality of decorating your home with what you have is that not everything can be used. It’s better to save up for big-ticket items and replace them with neutral-colored furniture because it will stand the test of time and look good with almost every color and style. Sometimes, we can’t use all the furniture we already have.

Be savvy and choose the items you already have carefully! Some can look better and are easier to incorporate into a room than others.

Here’s a rule of thumb…

This is a good rule to keep in mind!

One easy way to find unique decor pieces is to peruse a thrift store, flea market, or estate sale. These are great places to find a unique piece and inexpensive furniture or decorative objects. Although thrifted pieces may not be family heirlooms, they have that time-honed look and feel. 

About Our Homes

Our homes are our sanctuary- a safe place away from the noise and clutter of the outside world, a place of comfort! It’s so important to create a space that is uniquely yours. It really does not matter what is on trend, in style, or the best- not at all! What matters is YOU and your family.

It matters that you create a space that works for YOU! Be happy and content! Change what you can, and be grateful for the rest!

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the 3 5 7 rule?

This is the rule of odds. Our eyes love things in odd numbers. Three is called the magic number in interior design. Grouping three things together is very attractive to us. So when you decorate, use things in odd numbers.

What is the 80/20 rule?

This rule is all about creating beauty and balance in a room. It states that 80 percent of a room should be neutral in color, and 20 percent should be other colors that work together with your neutral color palette. Watch the undertones in decor. Make sure they work together.

What is the 70 30 10 rule?

This is another rule about color. This rule states that 70 percent of a room should be one color, 30 percent a secondary color, and 10 percent an accent color. Remember to watch undertones and make sure they work together.