Lovely summer, spring, and even fall temps lure us outside, as they should. Extend your outdoor time by creating a budget friendly backyard. You don’t have to spend a fortune, there are plenty of cheap outdoor decorating and inexpensive backyard design ideas, especially if you’re a little bit handy. Read on to learn about outdoor decorating on a budget.
Inexpensive Backyard Design
If you don’t already have a deck or patio, you can lay your own paving stones or even pour a patio for very little money. For that matter, you can create a space under a tree or other cozy area of the garden. Once you have an outdoor space, think about adding some shade with umbrellas, a sun sail, or build a pergola.
If you do the work yourself on a patio or deck, you may have materials left over. Utilize leftover cement to pour steppingstones using an inexpensive mold, unused pavers, or bricks to create a pathway leading from the garden to the outdoor space.
Once you have a place to sit and relax, it’s time to decorate. Outdoor rugs add pizzazz and/or cover up less than attractive deck or concrete flooring. Outdoor seating can be created in a myriad of ways. A table can be constructed of some whiskey barrels and an old door or free pallets can be screwed together to make raised lounge chairs. Don’t forget to add some comfy cushions that can be handmade, used and recovered, or purchased.
Of course, you can also buy furniture for your outdoor space but to keep in line with a budget friendly backyard area, look for sales or scour garage, estate sales, and consignment stores. As long as the furniture has good bones, any cosmetic defects can be sanded out and refinished or even spray painted.
Additional Cheap Outdoor Decorating Ideas
Plants warm up a space and can transform a boring area into a Shangri-La. For more bang for your buck, opt for perennial plants which will come back year after year. Either plant them around the deck or invest in some pots and group them around the deck or patio. Look for some tall and shorter plants along with blooming perennials.
To further extend your outdoor living area, hang a hammock or a suspended chair either from trees or build a simple wooden structure.
Build a fire pit (if legal in your area). Add some lights via tiki torches, solar candles, or strings of patio lights. Introduce some media with a Bluetooth waterproof speaker and/or an outdoor screen for movie nights.
Cheap Outdoor Decorating Tips
Outdoor decorating on a budget is actually a lot of fun and allows you to play around. Think about what sort of skills you have or feel you can learn and the sky’s the limit.
Maybe you have an artistic streak to paint fencing, a privacy screen, or outdoor wall. Maybe you’re a gardener extraordinaire with a flair for floral décor, or perhaps your forte is cooking so you want to create an outdoor kitchen with a pretty herb garden.
Take advantage of social media and see what your friends and neighbors have for sale. Again, cheap outdoor decorating doesn’t have to look cheap. A good way to accomplish that is to splurge on one nice thing and then repurpose, repaint, and DIY the rest of the décor.