You’re redecorating your dining room. Maybe it looks bland and dull, and you need to spruce it up, but don’t have a lot of money. Or, perhaps you’ve just finished a remodel, and you don’t have a lot of money left for decorating the room. Either way, you need some dining room decorating ideas, and you can’t afford to spend a lot. Try out some of these Dining Room Decorating Ideas on a Budget to help you get started.
1) EAT
The dining room is where you eat, so it only makes sense to have a sign announcing that. These fun, wall-mounted letters from Amazon are a great way to decorate your room without spending much. One great thing about these is that they fit a rustic country theme, which is one of the easiest themes to build decorations for. Try making a similar decoration from scrap wood or pallet wood, and building matching rustic decorations.
2) Flowers
One of the great things about flowers is that, if you live in the right place, or have a garden, they’re free. If you’re on a budget, consider putting wildflowers or flowers from your garden in a vase like this and using it as a dining room decoration. You can place flowers anywhere, and they’ll add a lot of natural colors. While real flowers need some maintenance, you can also buy cheap fake flowers and place them in a vase as a winter decoration.
3) Wine Barrels and Whiskey Barrels
Whiskey barrels can be an affordable decoration, believe it or not. If you know somebody who has one lying around, or if you find one at a garage sale, they’re a large and eye-catching decoration that you can put to use in your dining room. In this video, cp: make it real shows you how to turn a wine or whiskey barrel into a storage table that will also make a great dining room decoration. By building the table, you save a lot of money, since these types of decorations can be expensive in stores.
4) DIY Twine Table Runner
If you’re on a very tight budget, this dollar store craft is for you. You can follow the instructions in this article to make an expensive-looking and tasteful table decoration from twine. The runner is simple and easy to make, and it only costs a couple of dollars, but it looks like something you could buy at an expensive hobby store. The twine means that it can fit a rustic or fall decorating scheme, but it’s also nice enough to look right in a traditional or classic dining room.
5) Seat Covers
Your dining room table and chairs are the centerpieces of the room, and as such, they’re integral to your decorating scheme. While it might seem expensive to change them, you can do a lot to change how they look with only a little money. One great way to inexpensively modify your dining room chairs is to add seat covers like these ones from Amazon. The covers stretch to cover the seats, and elastic keeps it from sliding around. Since they’re washable, they’ll even stay looking nice longer than cloth chairs might have.
6) DIY Decorative Coasters
Coasters are a great way to decorate your dining room without spending a lot. While they’re not a large decoration, they do take up a lot of space, and they’re noticeable to guests who come to eat and sit their drinks on the coasters. You can use these instructions by Heather from Daily DIY Life to make decorative coasters for a lower cost than any nice coasters you can purchase. The great thing about making it yourself, besides the cost, is that you can customize them to fit your taste once you know how to make them.
7) Nature
Bringing nature into your dining room is an amazing budget decoration because it can be free at times. You can bring in plants and get curtains that have natural photographic designs or look like leaves, like the ones in this photograph. While the curtains’ cost will depend on what curtains you get and where you go, you can bring in live plants from your garden, or wildflowers from your yard if you live in the country. Add a few green plants like the ones in the photograph to create a bold dining room look with minimal decoration.
8) Don’t F Up the Table
If you splurged on a nice table, you don’t want somebody messing it up. These coasters remind people of that in an amusing way. While you probably don’t want to put these out for formal events or for certain guests, they’ll make fun decorations. The great thing about a joke like this is that each person gets one, so if a guest is amused by it, it’ll be a noticeable decoration. There’s nothing worse than displaying something neat that nobody even bothers to look at.
9) Etched Glass
If you like etched glass, you’ve probably already decided that it’d be too expensive for your dining room decoration, but there are ways to get cheap etched glass decorations or glassware. In this article from the Spruce Crafts, Sherri Osborn explains how you can etch glass in any pattern you choose. Since you’ll probably want to start with something simple, you can try writing your name or a clever saying on the glass. You can even start with something tried and true like the words “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry.”
10) Choose Light Fixtures
Light fixtures are often overlooked for simple decorating projects, but they can be a big part of creating the look you want for a room. While you might want fancy and ornate light fixtures or chandeliers, they can get expensive quickly. Instead, get a cheaper light fixture like this. This fixture is inexpensive, but the glass shade and oil-rubbed bronze fit a variety of decorating schemes. Instead of one big chandelier, put a couple of lights like this in the room as needed.
11) DIY Wine Cork Letters
If you like wine, or even if you have another favorite drink that comes with metal bottle caps, you can save those and use them as materials for decorative crafts. One neat craft to try in your dining room is a wine cork or metal bottle cap monogram. You can use the instructions in this article to make a DIY decoration and adapt them to use your choice of material. While the instructions refer to wedding decoration, you can use something like this as a permanent decoration in your dining room, and choose a favorite saying to spell with them.
12) Mason Jars
Mason jars are a cheap decoration, no matter where you find them. You can get a decoration like this from Amazon, or get some mason jars and create decorations. These jars fit the dining room theme, since they’re used for food storage but also as glassware by many people, and there are many ways to design your own mason jar decorations. You can use them as a vase and use fairy lights to light them up if you have guests over in the evenings or buy this decoration that’s ready to use.
13) Whiskey- and Wine-Themed Prints
Whiskey and wine are classy decorating themes if you like a glass every once in a while. They make good dining room themes if you have a wet bar in your dining room, or if you like to have a glass of wine over dinner. You can get prints like these for a relatively low cost, and they cover a fair amount of empty wall space. The great thing about any wine-related decoration is that it‘ll probably have a lot of red and purple colors, which will stand out, even in a sparsely decorated room.
14) Whiskey Barrel Shot Glasses
Shot glasses aren’t just for drinking. If you spend time in tourist traps and gift shops, you’ll see shot glasses for every state, monument, or park, and many shot glasses with funny statements on them. In this video, Robbiethewoodturner shows you how to make a whiskey barrel shot glass using woodturning. If you don’t have woodturning skills, you can make these from popsicle sticks, since they’re for decoration rather than drinking. Try making whiskey barrel decorations as a Dollar Tree DIY project, and tell us how it turns out!
15) Candles
Candles are always a great dining room or kitchen decoration, but they can be expensive if you use them a lot. One great solution to this is a flameless scented candle set like this one from Amazon. Since the candles are flameless, they won’t get burned up quickly like other candles, and they still give off a vanilla scent like you’d get from a scented candle. It could become tiring to have the same smell in your dining room all the time, so it may be worth investing in a second set so that you can change the scent regularly.
16) DIY Bottle Opener Maze
Bottle openers are naturally something you’d use in a dining room. While you might not need a bottle opener for your bottles anymore, a bottle opener is a great vintage or retro art piece, and you can make one for a relatively low cost. In this video, Brett Withjack demonstrates how you can build a bottle opener maze for the cost of materials. This is a neat decoration because you can turn it into a game by seeing where the bottle cap lands.
17) Paint
Paint might not be your first thought for decorating on a budget, but consider the amount of coverage you get for your money. A couple of cans of paint can add an incredible amount of color, so you need less decoration for the area. If you have white walls or a wall color you don’t like, you’re going to want to cover it up. Instead of covering it with numerous hangings, look through some popular paint colors, and pick something that you like.
What theme are you hoping for in your dining room? Did you see any ideas you hadn’t thought of, or did one of our ideas inspire you? Please tell us about it in the comments below!
