3 Tips for Decorating Your Apartment on a Budget

Whether you live in a rented apartment or a shoe-box one-bed you’ve just bought, when it comes to decorating, the main restrictions are space and price. Here’s how to stamp your own personality on your pad without blowing the budget.

Deck out your kitchen in colourful garden furniture. This is the stylish Dublin apartment of Mark Grehan, who runs hip floral store The Garden. True to his love of the outdoors, Mark has brought a feel of the outside in with lots of gorgeous house plants. We also love his affordable, brightly hued?TK Maxx metal chairs surrounding a repainted Ikea kitchen table. Tour the whole?chic D8 pad here.

Mix vintage bargains with fun, functional (and inexpensive) modern items. The French tenant of this delectable Dublin Docklands apartment mixed and matched old family furniture, vintage fleamarket finds and ever-reliable Ikea kit. Here, the standard light came from Ikea, the chairs were a bargain on eBay, and the chest of drawers is an old family piece. She cleverly used old movie and theatre posters as giant artworks too.

Embrace the darkness. So you don’t have floor-to-ceiling windows and tons of natural light? Follow these words of wisdom from boutique owner Wendy Crawford: ?It’s a dark space so we thought rather than trying to make it light with light paints – and it just being a bit shadowy – we said we’d embrace the darkness.? She used Plummett by Farrow & Ball to create a gorgeous moody feel.

Want more room? Check out these?smart space-saving storage ideas.

Photography: Mark Scott and Doreen Kilfeather

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