I’m so excited to be sharing my “Patio Makeover on a Budget” post with y’all!

If you follow me on social media (especially on my Instagram stories!), then you’ve heard me talk about my patio makeover. As you’ll be able to see in the pictures below, our patio space was very sad and lonely. And we’ve recently started hosting our church’s community group at our house, so leaving it empty wasn’t an option because we really need the extra space. So I decided to spruce it up a bit! However, Jay and I are also keeping a closer eye on our budget as we save for a house, so he gave me a challenge: Update our patio space for under $200. And yes, I know what you’re thinking – “Under $200? How’s that even possible? Isn’t that what one chair costs?” – because that’s what I thought too. Hence the word “challenge”! So, as someone that prides myself on being pretty budget-savvy, I set off to see what I could get done!

I thoroughly enjoyed the process and got lots of questions along the way. So I’ve put together a few easy tips and the steps I followed in order to create our new space. Hopefully it will help anyone else that’s wanting to update their space!

|| Patio Makeover on a Budget – Tips for Creating Your New Space ||

Tip 1 || Create a budget

I know this seems obvious, but it needs to be said. If you go into your makeover with the mindset of, “Oh, I’ll just see how it goes”, then you’re definitely going to over-spend. For me, it was best to create a list of all the items I needed for our space: rug, chairs, pillows/cushions, table, string lights, and plants. From there, I started researching a few of those items to get a rough estimate of how much each would cost. I went onto a few websites to find the lowest price for a large outdoor rug ($20), decided I could make one of those affordable rugs work (without deciding on the specific one just yet), and wrote “rug: $20” on my budget spreadsheet. [Side note: I know you may not know where to look for affordable home/patio pieces, so I’ve listed some places in tip #2!] I repeated this process for all of the items to get a rough estimate of what everything would cost. After doing this, I discovered that if I stuck to the lowest end of all of those items, that I would be able to make $200 work… just barely!

Tip 2 || Search through affordable home/patio websites

This one is probably one of the more tricky tips simply because a lot of people don’t know where to start. But good news! I shop and link products for a living, so I’ve got you covered. A few of my favorite affordable home stores are: Ikea, Homegoods, Craigslist, Overstock, Wayfair, World Market, and Target. Those stores comprise 99% of my home and patio decor, so if you stick with them, you’ll be just fine!

Tip 3 (Optional) || Create a vision board

Okay, this one’s not 100% necessary and will take you a little bit of time, but if you’re stressed about how everything’s going to look once it’s all put together, then I highly recommend this step! I use Photoshop to put together a little vision board with the products I want as I find them. If you’re thinking, “Okay, whoa, too much!”, then feel free to skip to tip #4!

So to create the vision board, I create a new document in Photoshop. Then I screenshot the item I’m thinking about for my space (rug, chair, etc.) on my Mac laptop (holding command + shift + 4). Once it goes onto my desktop, I drag and drop it into Photoshop. From there, you can resize it and such.

The point of this is for you to be able to see what all of the items you’re purchasing will look like once they’re all placed together. It helps me reduce my buyer’s remorse for sure! For this patio makeover, I started with this outdoor rug that I was obsessed with. And, I mean, really – Does it get much better than just $20? Once I placed the rug on my vision board, I coordinated all of the other items around it.

The next big purchase was the chairs because I knew they’d be the hardest to find. Even on the more affordable websites like Overstock and World Market, just one wicker chair was $80. So if I purchased two of them, goodbye budget! That’s where Craigslist comes in. I searched for about a week before I found a nice set of chairs. One set of wicker chairs that I found was cobalt blue, which I wasn’t too sure about. So that’s where the vision board came in! I pasted a photo of the bright blue chairs onto my vision board with my rug and decided I didn’t like the look of it, so I moved on. I repeated this process until I found a set of chairs that I could work with (the brown ones we have in the photos).

From there, I searched Ikea, Homegoods, and Target for the rest of the items. As I found affordable pieces that fit within my budget, I screenshotted them, placed them on my vision board, and decided whether or not I liked the overall look. Once I liked everything on my vision board, I began purchasing and my vision board starting coming to life!

Here’s what my final vision board looked like (it’s not too far off from my finished look, right?!):

Really, there aren’t many more tips I can think of. If you have your budget, know where to shop, and know how to brainstorm the overall look of everything, then you’re all set!

|| Budget Breakdown ||

So I know y’all are all wondering if I was able to keep everything within my $200 budget. Well, here’s the complete breakdown of the items I purchased:

• Outdoor rug (World Market) – $20
• Wicker chairs (resold on Craigslist; originally from World Market) – $70
• Bistro table (Ikea) – $25
• Striped Pillows (Ikea) – $18
• Plant (Home Depot) – $25
• String lights, 2 sets (Target) – $22
• Lanterns (Ikea) – $12
• Blue cabinet (HomeGoods, clearance) – $30

SO – For anyone counting, that’s a grand total of $222. So I was darn close! I will say, the marquee letter was not included in my budget because we already owned it. The particular marquee letter we own is very nice and kinda pricey, but there are also tons of marquee letter DIYs if you search on Pinterest! I bet if you DIYed it, you could do it for under $50 – which still isn’t bad!

Sorry that was so long-winded, but I’ve gotten so many questions about this process that I wanted to lay everything out and answer everything in one post! Now, to the fun part – Enjoy the pretty pictures! (Also, side note: Our landlord chose to put outdoor carpeting on our patio because the concrete is cracked and has random paint splatter. I didn’t like it at first, but it kind of grew on me because it gives the patio that indoor/outdoor vibe!)

|| Before ||

|| After ||

|| SHOP THE POST ||

Remember, a lot of these items I’m unable to link because they’re from Craigslist, Ikea, and HomeGoods (all un-linkable), so I linked similar items if you’re wanting to recreate this look!

Exact outdoor rug || Similar wicker chairs || Exact marquee letter || Similar table || Similar pillows || Similar plant || Exact string lights || Similar lanterns || Exact welcome mat

If you loved this “Patio Makeover on a Budget” post, would you be a sweetheart and pin it to one of your boards on Pinterest? 🙂

Thanks so much for checking out my patio makeover on a budget! If you’re a fan of saving money, be sure to check out my 5 Ways to Save Money post! Also, if you have any favorite budget-friendly spots to purchase home decor, be sure to share the love in the comments!