Five Ways to Decorate Cheap And Fancy

By Lev Novak

The problem with combining cheap and fancy is the danger there is in being found out as a cheap fraud. Wearing knock-off shirts, for example, is all well and good until the Ralph Lauren logo is revealed to be a sticker that falls into your home-made wine.

So, when it comes to your apartment, how are you going to make it look fancy on the cheap?

1. When in Doubt, Elegance

Sometimes fancy isn’t about what you do have: sometimes it’s about what you don’t have. Elegance means you can look fancy simply by avoiding looking cheap. Throw out the trash everywhere. No Solo Cups in the cabinet. A quick layer of clean is going to be fantastic, and, if you can, a plug in air-freshener is as cheap as they come, but if anyone asks, you sprayed a fine mist of perfume all over the apartment.

Elegance is cheap, and is about the absence of cheaper things. Hide them all in a closet if you have to, but let it happen.

2. Frames

The secret to a fancy looking apartment is frames.

Simple as that. Have some framed art on the wall and you look fantastic. A poster is eh, and a fancy poster looks like you’re trying too hard. But a fancy poster that’s framed over by the kitchen table? WOAH! That looks fancy, even if it’s cheap, because art is actually quite inexpensive. Buy a used art-book, cut out your favorite full-color pages with an exacto knife and frame those puppies up, and presto! You look fancy, cultured, and not at all like a weirdo who takes an exacto knife to an art book to impress strangers.

See? You’re getting fancier already.

3. Get a Boxspring

You can’t be sleeping on a mattress on the floor, pal. You need a box-spring, because no matter how neat and cool the rest of your room or apartment is, the subtle undertone will remain that you’re essentially sleeping on the floor in a doggie bed.

4. Matching

Matching is a strong play, because it shows you put thought into your apartment, but that thought doesn’t have to go as far back as actual spending would.

Consider, for a moment, what you have in your apartment. Anything, right? But what if you matched a color scheme, like a Wes Anderson wonder. What if your towels matched your sheets, and you had your bed made? What if your apartment subtly went for a certain style consistently, all throughout the house- browns oaks to highlight the wood floors you got, or something to contrast the carpet, or building off of whatever apartment vagary has already forced itself upon you.

I’ll tell you what. You’d look fancy, impeccable, and cool and it wouldn’t cost you any money.

Matching is a secret way to show the world you have your life together, even when you don’t.

5. Leave Fake Diamonds Scattered Around

Fannnnnnncy.

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