How to Give Your Dining Room a Makeover on a Shoestring Budget

Passionate interior decorators know that a home is never truly done. There’s always a room or space that needs to be improved or refurbished, including the often-neglected dining room.

In some bigger Filipino homes, the formal dining room is rarely used by the family, especially if they already have a dedicated breakfast nook or bar area where they usually hang out to eat. Usually, the dining room becomes a venue only for special occasions like Christmas, birthdays, and family reunions instead of being a room where a family gathers to eat daily meals.

Fortunately, you can give your dining room a makeover to transform it and make it more inviting for your family to dine in every day. And the best thing about it is that you don’t even have to break the bank to do it. You can set a reasonable budget and stick to it using these great tips for a dining room makeover.

Plan for Your Space

One of the most sensible things to do before buying your first furniture is to lay out the elements of your dining room so you can determine the right type and size of furniture and decor to fit the space. Planning for your space can also prevent you from spending on furniture and decorative pieces that you don’t really need or have no space for.

Redo Your Walls

One of the cheapest ways to dramatically transform a room is to change its color or pattern by applying new paint or wallpaper. Depending on what design style inspires your space, you can opt for an earthy and neutral palette, vibrant hues to correspond to the color of the year, or even go as far as using wallpaper with vintage flower prints for an eclectic touch. It all depends on your style and the look you are going for.

Sell Your Old Furniture and Get Ones That Fit Better

Your dining table and dining chairs are most likely some of the most expensive pieces of furniture in your dining room. Letting them go would not be an easy decision to make. Fortunately, you can always sell your old furniture if recovering part of the cost of acquiring them is important to you. List them on a reputable buy and sell online site like LookingFour to ensure that you get the best deals for your used furniture. In doing so, you can recoup some or most of the money you’ve spent on these pieces then use it to buy new furniture that fit your dining room better.

Refurbish Old Furniture

Another affordable way to update your furniture is to refinish them and change its hardware. Perhaps you have an old buffet table you inherited from your grandmother. Such an ornate piece of furniture might not fit your current decor, but with a little pain and updated new hardware, it might just be the piece that pulls the room together.

Update Your Dining Room with a Change of Lighting Fixtures

If your dining room is still sporting a traditional crystal chandelier while the rest of your house sports a modern or contemporary style, it may be time to change your chandelier. For this year, billiard lights are the trending light fixtures for the dining room. These are industrial-style lighting fixtures that consist of 2 or more series of lights on a frame for a more streamlined look over the table. Other options include chandeliers with simple geometric designs to fit a more modern or contemporary interior.

Brighten Up the Room with Mirrors

One way to make a space feel and look larger is to brighten up the room. It’s a good thing that you can easily double the natural and artificial lighting in your dining room just by adding decorative mirrors on the walls. It’s another affordable hack that you can explore when giving your dining room a makeover.

Add Interesting Vignettes on Tabletops

After arranging the furniture, the final finishing touches include getting the right accessories to fit the style or theme of your dining room. To add interest and personality to your dining space, you can arrange a vignette on your dining table as a centerpiece—or the buffet table as a decorative accent. A vignette is a visual composition that can include your collectibles, trinkets, plants, candles, small sculptural pieces, and more. If you’re creating one for the dining table, a good tip is to put your composition on a tray for easy removal in case you need to use the entire table.

Use Dried or Everlasting Flowers

It would be lovely to have fresh flowers every day in your dining room, but purchasing fresh flowers on a regular basis can get expensive. As an alternative, you can use dried oat stems, statice flowers, eucalyptus leaves, and more. You can add a few simple dried flower arrangements as a part of your vignette or scatter them across the dining room.

Liven Up the Dining Room with Houseplants

Bring life to your dining room by adding greenery in the form of houseplants. However, you have to be aware of your houseplants’ requirements, especially the lighting. Most plants prefer to be placed near a south window where they could get the most sunlight. That said, some plants thrive on little sunlight and tolerate a lower level of light. With these types of plants, you can have more freedom about where to place them.

Redecorating your dining room doesn’t have to mean a full-on renovation that costs a lot of money. With just a bucket of paint, new furniture, updated lighting fixtures, and fresh accessories, you just might be able to create a brand-new dining room that your family will enjoy every day.

Learn more about how you can buy and sell dining room furniture on LookingFour.com, one of the most reliable places to shop and sell online in the Philippines.