Decorate Your Home with These Inexpensive Art Ideas! | New York City

When it comes to decorating your NYC home, it’s the finishing touches — like artwork — that add character and charm. Add instant impact to your apartment with these inexpensive art ideas!

Locating Affordable Art

Inexpensive art sources are everywhere. You just need to know where to look!

Minted is a favorite resource for art from independent artists. You’ll find an excellent range of limited edition prints of drawings, paintings, mixed media, and more. Each piece can be purchased framed or unframed, and you can even order custom art.

Another online source for affordable art is Etsy. You’ll find everything from one-of-a-kind works to prints to vintage paintings. If you find an artist whose work you like, you can even commission an original!

Of course, discount stores like Target or HomeGoods have plenty of art for sale, too. To avoid a mass produced look, simply upgrade or paint the frame.

Want to support a New York artist? Keep an eye out for open studio tours. Usually scheduled for a single day or over a weekend, open studios are a fun way to discover up and coming artists.

Image Source: Flickr/Hrag Vartanian

Find It For Free

Is your budget tiny? There are lots of places to find free art.

Search the Internet for free vintage images, and you will uncover an almost inexhaustible source of free art. You’ll discover everything from old photos to advertisements to vintage ephemera (cards, images, etc.). The Graphics Fairy and the Library of Congress are both wonderful sources of high quality imagery.

Bloggers are another resource for free art. Try searching Pinterest for free printables to see what you come up with. All you need to do is find an image you like, print it, and add a frame.

Give an Old Painting a Second Life

Art doesn’t have to be new to be high quality.

New York is full of vintage and thrift stores, and you’ll find plenty of secondhand art at both. We’ve spotted huge racks of unframed canvases at our local Housing Works!

Of course, you may have to dig a bit. There’s a reason why some of those paintings ended up where they did! It’s worth it when you uncover a gem, though.

When appraising vintage art, focus on the quality of the picture and not the framing. An ugly frame can easily be replaced or even repainted.

Do It Yourself

Are you feeling creative? Try making your own artwork!

Here are some of our favorite DIY ideas for creating inexpensive art:

Frame a beautiful piece of marbled or patterned paper.
Paint chips are free! Lay them out in a herringbone pattern, punch out a bunch of hearts, or lay out a chevron pattern.
Create abstract art by painting over an old canvas.
Print your vacation photos in black and white, frame them, and then hang a gallery wall.
Use an app like Watercolor Effect or Waterlogue to turn your photos into instant art.
Head to your local printer and have them make an engineering print of a favorite photo. The giant size will add impact to a blank wall.