Choosing Home Decorating Styles When You’re On A Budget

You can get professional decorating help and guidance without paying professional prices, if you know where to look! Carol turned to a local university program in interior decorating where she got help from interns for a fraction of the cost, and they did a professional job! Read about her innovative strategy:

I owned a very old mid-west “prairie” style house once. I knew it would be hard to decorate it appropriately. I wanted to keep to the “Frank Lloyd” feel of the place, but found that most furniture galleries featured pieces that were well beyond my budget. I turned to a local university program to find an internship course that gave students real life decorating experience, in hopes of finding a low budget approach that would work for me. The program instructor was happy to receive a letter outlining my needs, with pictures of the living and dining rooms and their unique design. Three advanced design students were chosen to visit and work with me on budget, style, and coordination. We spent an afternoon going over interior design photos of representative prairie-styled rooms. I was interviewed about my likes and dislikes, color schemes, and whether I liked a sparse or filled feeling in my living room. We identified many styles and furniture pieces that I’d admired, but could not afford, and was told that they would be scouring local auctions and estate sales to find various pieces I might like. The living room was measured carefully, and more detailed photos were taken so that the students could mock up a miniature model to work with on their initial design ideas. The trickiest part, at least for the students, was keeping to my very limited budget of $3,000.

To set an initial stage for their work, they visited one weekend just to resurface my living room’s wood floors as well as put a fresh coat of paint on the walls. Over the years, various owners had put in bright colors on the room’s walls. The students restored them back to neutral and natural tones that better reflected its original prairie style. I didn’t hear again from the students for a month or two, though I knew they were working on this as an assignment as they neared the end of their semester. This was to be a large component of their grade, and I was confident that they would come up with an acceptable set of furnishings and accessories. My patience paid off, and we spent another day going over photos and mock ups of some wonderful pieces they had identified through various sales. We finalized a number of pieces and I arranged funds for purchase. The students spent an entire weekend delivering, arranging, and in some cases performing small repairs on the chosen pieces. Once again, measurements of the living room and its final settings were taken, as well as many more photographs, which would be used to create a project portfolio for their final grade. The instructor was so happy with their preliminary reports that we agreed to have the entire class visit while the students gave a presentation on their work. Those accomplished students received an education in working with a real client on period styles, and I was given a wonderful prairie living room that even Frank Lloyd Wright would have admired.

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