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This shows you exactly how I created my apartment living room wall decor while sticking to a major budget.

apartment living room

This post shows you exactly how I designed and created the living room wall decor I have in my apartment.

The living room is one of the main places in my apartment that all my friends and family was going to see when they came over so I wanted to make sure that it looked really cute.

This wall was BIG and I wanted it to look expensive, without it actually being expensive.

I was able to do this entire wall for under $200. Considering everything I have going on, that's an amazing deal!! Usually just those picture frames would add up to $200. 

This post takes you through the entire process so you can create a similar apartment living room wall decor in your own home. 

Apartment Living Room Wall Decor:

Before + After of Apartment Living Room:

first apartment

I feel like this doesn't even give you the full feeling of how large this wall is. It's HUGE! 

Because it was so big, I needed something that would fill it without making the things on the wall look miniature. 

I'll have everything on the wall linked below but the rest of the items can be found linked on this blog post - Everything I Bought For My First Apartment.

Want to see this Apartment Living Room Wall Decor as a video?!

How To Create DIY Canvas Art

first apartment decorating

I DIYed this entire canvas (+ frame) for less than $100! For a canvas this big, that is a REALLY good price. 

This wall is a BIG wall, so way before I even moved in I started planning on how I wanted my living room decorating to look. I’ll insert the picture of the moodboard I created for this room below. 

apartment

The canvas in the mood board above isn't the one I ended up recreating (obvi). 

I actually found a canvas that I loved on one of my favorite bloggers Instagram stories (@dressupbuttercup) and ended up finding it on William Sonoma. 

It was almost $850!! $850!!!! I obviously was not about to pay that so I knew I would have to figure out how to DIY it myself. 

Here's the canvas from William Sonoma that I wanted to recreate: 

living room wall decor

Supplies Needed:

-36x48" Canvas (this was by far the cheapest place I could find it)

-Artist's Loft Modeling Paste

-Artist Loft Paint (I just bought this brand because it was the cheapest!)

-Rub N' Buff in Gold Leaf

To recreate this, I was able to get allll the supplies for this Canvas at Michaels. The huge canvas (36x48), was 70% off so I got it for like $20ish dollars which is insane!

I took videos of me actually painting this so check out my Youtube video above to see how I actually did it.

How I Made The Canvas Frame:

I wanted this to look as expensive as possible and after looking at the most expensive canvases, they all had a thin frame around them.

Even getting this framed at Michaels was going to be a lot of money, so I convinced my boyfriends dad to help me make one.

 We got supplies for this from Home Depot and it was around $20 dollars. We just found molding that I liked the width of, then cut it at a 45 degree angle so the corners lined up.

 That makes it sound easier than it was, but he was able to do it in like two hours.

I then took Rub n’ buff in gold leaf to make the frame gold. This looked REALLY good. Highly recommend! A small bottle of this goes a LONG way!

Where To Find Cheap Black Frames

first apartment living room ideas

(*ignore the cord! we hadn't quite yet moved them behind the frames) 

Because I have so much gold going on, I wanted the frames to be black. We found these frames at Michaels on sale for $6!!! We actually had one break and they were back up to $19. So try to find them on sale because $6 was an unbelievable price. 

Because this is a rental, we “tried” to put as little holes in the wall as possible. At first, I wanted to put NO holes in the wall but that wasn’t possible with my huge frame/lights plan.

We were able to use Command strips for these frames so at least that saved some major hole damage from being done. 

living room

I made all my photos black and white in the Lightroom app (free)! 

How To DIY The Gold Picture Lights

living room decor DIY

Recreate This Picture Light:

I LOVE picture lights. Whenever I see a space I love, they almost always have picture lights in them.

I wanted to figure out a way to get the gold picture light look I love while sticking to a budget.

I ended up finding these picture lights from Ikea for only $29! The other gold ones I was looking at were around $200 so this was a major steal.

These picture lights only came in nickel so I decided to try and use my trusty Rub N' Buff and they turned out beautifully! 

I found it easiest to use a brush, let it dry, then go over it with a rag.

Final Before + After:

first apartment

This room is still a work in progress but having this wall done already makes it look 1,000,000x better!

Next step - new pillows, hang curtains, and style the coffee table. 

If you have any other questions about this wall, comment them below!

This post was all about apartment living room wall decor.

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