Recently I’ve bought so much homeware my boyfriend’s tried to stage an intervention. My new, rose gold vice has overtaken my beauty product habit, and I’m now more drawn to a pretty candle holder than I am a liquid lipstick. Is this… is this what growing up is?

However, a few years ago I re-painted and wallpapered my room (you’ll see from the photos) and it’s now not exactly… to my taste. Therefore I’m hesitant to spend a billion dollarz on homeware in case in a few years time I’m like ‘nah’ again. I did a uni room tour blog post a while back, and a lot of people asked me where some items were from and asked for interior design advice, so I thought I’d do the equivalent for my bedroom at home and show you how I did it (and how I didn’t spend $$$)!

Do some DIY:

Sand is free! (Ok, holidays are not. But I’ve been on a few this year so I thought I’d take advantage). All of my friends have taken the piss out of my sand jar but it’s a super cute memory of all my holidays that I can keep fo’eva (or, until I inevitably drop it and all the sand gets muddled up), and it’s made a pretty stylish (and free) lil addition to my boring cream and beige bathroom.

Use packaging as decoration:

Displaying things you already own that are packaged cutely is something I do on the regs, and is a cheap and easy way to make a focal point on a table or dresser. Above, on my ‘extremely blogger’ marble plate, I’ve made up a lil array of things I grab as I’m going out the door (lipstick, hand san, sunglasses). HANDY.

Re-knob your furniture:

It’s such ‘Pinterest-fruit-salad-recipe-sharing-Mum’ advice to say that re-doorknobbing your cabinets will make a huge difference to a room, but HONESTLY. Honestly. All my furniture is that shitty IKEA Hemnes stuff, and just by changing the knobs from the standard IKEA ones to some pretty marble and gold ones, the furniture looks 10000x more ~expensive~.

Don’t fight against something in the room you can’t change, roll wid it:

I stupidly made my room all bright pink and dumb and wallpapered. I wish I hadn’t, as it’s a bit too ‘in your face’ for my style now (in hindsight, I would have painted the feature wall behind my bed a soft grey or dusky pink), and there’s nothing I can really do about it. But instead of completely working against the colour scheme, I incorporated neutral, metal colours (e.g. extreme amounts of rose gold) which have the ‘pink’ tone I can’t completely ignore, but also makes it way more 20-year-old-girl rather than ‘impatient 16 year old set loose with literally the only wallpaper Homebase had’.

Go to discount stores you’d never usually step foot in/watch YouTube decor videos:

YouTube interior decor bloggers are my new guilty pleasure. ‘ICovetThee’, ‘Christy Mel’, ‘itslinamar’, ‘CocoChic’ and basically every suggested video you get from watching their homeware videos are my favs. Recently, a lot of British YouTubers have been into ‘B&M Homestore’. Yeah, the really unglam shop your nan gets off-brand crisps from. I doubted them, but made a trip down to my hometown’s own gross B&M anyway. Anyway, it’s now basically my favourite shop. It had SO much good shit, and nothing was over £5. So, my advice is to check cheapy shops you’d never really go to for rare gems, and whenever you’re about to go and look round them, save time by typing the name of the shop, the word ‘haul’ and the month you’re shopping in into YouTube (e.g., ‘B&M Haul May 2016’). That way if there’s anything worth buying you’ll know what aisles to head to.

Put shit that ain’t pretty into matching baskets:

I hate having my beauty and haircare products out on display, but whenever I put them into drawers I can never find anything or end up ignoring products. Sometimes in life we just have to accept not everything comes in aesthetically pleasing packaging (well, until I can afford All Aesop Errrrything). So the answer to this is to buy baskets which match your colour scheme, and chuck everything in them. Not only do the baskets save worktop room as everything is piled vertically rather than horizontally, it groups all the mess into one area and looks kinda rad.

Don’t be afraid to mismatch:

Yes, none of these pillows match. Yes, what the fuck are some blue pillows doing in there. YES, WHY DIDN’T I BUY MORE OF THOSE AMAZING FLAMINGO PILLOWS WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE. Good questions. IDK man, it all just kind of ~works~, because although nothing matches perfectly, they all kind of in-keep with the overall theme. Don’t be afraid to buy from lots of different brands, it may not all match perfectly but if you ❤ the items then do you, boo.

Look in the clearance sections for slightly imperfect items:

In TK Maxx, if a product is broken it gets a sticker on it that says ‘Damaged but still adorable’. At the end of the day, aren’t we all just slightly broken TK Maxx corner tables?

This rose gold mirrored table is my absolute DREAM table, and it pulls my whole dressing room together. There’s a tiiiiny chip in one of the corners (hence why it was £21), but I just turned that corner to face the wall. MIND YA DAMN BUSINESS.

Incorporate your theme into everything you can, in subtle ways:

This and changing your drawer handles knobs are super easy (and cheap) ways to ~spread a theme~. Whenever there’s a trend, you can guarantee PaperChase will jump on it, so just by buying stationary to match your theme and leaving it around the room is not only helpful (I will never have to search around for a notepad and pen again whilst writing down a number someone has carelessly left me via voicemail), it also makes ya room pawwwwpin’. This is an especially good tip for kitchens n shit. ALSO, switching my normal hangers to all matching pink HAY (via TK Maxx, I am a true Maxxinista) and rose gold Primark hangers has made such a subtle, but v noticeable, difference. My cheapo hanger tip is essentially Lebowski’s Rug.

Hope this helped in some way or another!

Amelia XX