New home? Seven ways to put your stamp on interiors without blowing the budget

First-time buyers can add personality to the plainest white box with judicious vintage buys and clever design
Gun Hill Park - Plot 22
Paintings bought on eBay and re-framed can be displayed on walls and easels
Weston Homes
Pattie Baron8 November 2022

Buying your first home may have broken the bank but you don’t have to sit on patio furniture for the next five years.

Nor do you need to go in big for the least sustainable option: cheap fast furniture where the race is on to see whether it will go out of fashion or break first.

Weston Homes enlisted Robin Daines, project design manager at GP&J Baker at the Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, to decorate its show home at Gun Hill Park in Aldershot (one-bedroom homes from £285,000, call 01252 759437) for a fraction of the six-figure sum such a project would usually cost.

Here are his tips for creating a beautifully decorated home, where the most expensive piece of furniture cost just £300.

Make a little go a long way

Allow your new home’s best qualities to shine through by choosing statement pieces to enhance them.

A bold rug bought for £125 makes a dramatic wall hanging by the staircase of the show flat, while a £300 marble-topped table (the most expensive piece of furniture in the apartment) is a stylish welcome at the entrance.

Buy smart, buy eBay

"Buying on eBay, which for me is a safer bet than buying at auction, means that you have many different things coming from different places and different periods, and so you get a feeling that the rooms have evolved over time, rather than buying new things from one place," says Daines.

Create a flow with neutrals

Palest clay and vanilla are used to make a good flow. "If you decorate a room with colour, you’re tied to a scheme. Start on a neutral canvas, and you can build layers with colours and textures," says Daines.

Daines recommends ‘timeless’ mid-century furniture
Weston Homes

Look to the classics

"I’m a huge fan of mid-century furniture," Daines says. "They’re proper pieces of furniture that don’t cost a fortune and work with everything: timeless, functional as well as good-looking."

In the dining area, the extendable dining table cost £200 and a late-Fifties sideboard was £175, both from eBay. In the living room, a pair of elegant black lacquer consoles on either side of the archway entrance were an eBay triumph.

Let in the light

Daines’ take on traditional net curtains for the dining area’s French doors and the living room’s long sash windows is to use Kravet’s openwork textural sheers that let the light in, yet have the body to take tailored pleats at the top, suspended from bronze rods.

In the living room, a pair of black lacquer consoles on either side of the archway entrance were an eBay find
Weston Homes

Think creatively

Throughout the house, creative touches personalise the space, turning it into a home.

Paintings bought on eBay and re-framed are displayed not just on walls but on easels, including cute tabletop versions, that he first paints and waxes to give them a glossy finish. Cheap-as-chips white Japanese lanterns that have graced many a bedsit are Daines’ choice for the bedroom ceilings.

Splash the cash on smaller items

“Use less expensive fabrics for curtains and upholstery," advises Robin, "then accent with smaller items of pricier fabrics to elevate or add a pop of colour to a room."

He saved extravagant splurges for cushions, such as using the exotic Mughal Garden print Shalimar from GP & J Baker’s Caspian Collection for the guest bedroom.

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