5 ways to give your bedroom an inexpensive makeover

Take a look at what you can do with these light strips:

Start Gallery

How to choose a living room paint color

(from apartmenttherapy.com)

You don’t have a lot of coins to toss around, but you want your apartment to look more like a grown-up’s with taste than a mish-mash of free stuff – isn’t that what Apartment Therapy is all about? Here are 10 make-it-classy-with-less tips.

1) Only buy things that are on sale. Although you may be tempted to buy the bath towels you want from Macy’s just to get it done and over with, you’ll save money in the long run if you wait until they have a home sale or a holiday sale. If you are diligent, you’ll begin spotting sales everywhere and resisting full-price items.

2) Prioritize where you spend your money – mix high and low. We bought a bed frame from West Elm, (on sale!) and then sheets from Target (on sale!). The bed frame mattered to us because it centered the room, design-wise, and got our mattress up off of the floor, but we are borrowing our dining room table from family.

Spa treatments you can do at home

3) Limit your use of fave stores. Even if you only buy from Target, IKEA and CB2, you should mix up how much you depend on one store or your home will look like a catalog. Instead of buying one bathroom set from Target, we bought the trash can and soap pump from Target, the bath mat and toothpaste jar from West Elm, a Q-tip container from The Container Store and a tray and cotton pad jar from Crate & Barrel.

4)  Paint, paint, paint! House Beautiful editor Elizabeth Mayhew’s theory is that no matter what color you paint your wall, it will look more refined and deliberate if you paint trim and molding white. We agree. Also, if you can paint, your colors will make much more of a statement than the standard-issue apartment-beige.

Click here for more tips

How to recycle your old towels and sheets

When it comes to mopping the floor, it’s a pain in the butt to move the chairs around a table. However, the folks at Ikea have come up with the perfect solution. These chair hangers are brackets that mount to the underside of your table to make cleaning your floor easier.

Here’s hoping the folks at www.ikea.com are designing something to lift the couch when I vacuum.

12.99 for a set of four and are available in-store only.

349.00, ikea.com

This Grundtal mirror is currently in my bedroom, but I wouldn’t mind hanging one in my bathroom. This Ikea round stainless steel frame can hang in any room of the house, and for only $29.99, I’m thinking about going back and purchasing another one.

www.ikea.com

Ever since I moved into my new apartment, I’ve been on the hunt for a slipcover for my Ikea Ektorp navy blue couch. Between my cats acting as though it was their scratching post and various spills staining the fabric over the last few years, the couch has seen better days.

After searching various sites looking for slipcovers, I went to my favorite home decor website, Apartment Therapy, and discovered that there was a company called Bemz who made slipcovers specifically for Ikea couches. I don’t have a picture of my couch, but I posted a picture of the Ektorp style so you guys can see what my couch used to look like. Here’s the slipcover I purchased from Bemz, which started the love affair between me and my new favorite color of the season.

$270.74, bemz.com