Just Moved Into A New Apartment? Here's How To Furnish It For A Low Price

With moving fees and security deposits, moving into your new home can often be an expensive affair. If you're low on money after your move, one way that you can inexpensively decorate your new place is to shop at used furniture stores.

Some items at these stores may have minor cosmetic damage, but older furniture is much sturdier when compared to new furniture made out of particle board. You'll be purchasing durable items that can easily be spruced up by painting, refinishing or reupholstering them. To help you out, read on to find out what you should be looking for when you're buying used furniture to decorate your new home.

Living Room

When you're trying to outfit your new home with items from a used furniture store, it's best to start with the sofa first. Patterned fabric can become dated quickly, so you should stick with solid colors unless you find a patterned sofa that particularly catches your eye. Solid colors also make it much easier for you to design your living room. When you place several pieces of patterned furniture together in the same room, they can quickly begin to clash with each other.

The great thing about buying older sofas from a used furniture store is that the frames are typically much higher quality than new sofas at the same price point. A sofa's springs can be repaired, but a broken frame can never be fixed. Your used sofa is likely to last for quite a long time. Later on, you can have it reupholstered in order to change the fabric to something you prefer better. If you're feeling adventurous, you can even reupholster the sofa yourself to save some money.

When it comes to recliners, the same advice applies. Purchase one in a solid color in order to make it easier to integrate into your living room design. You can have the recliner reupholstered later, as well.

Dining Room

If you can manage to find a set of four dining chairs that are in good condition, go ahead and buy them—it can be surprisingly difficult to find used matching chairs.

It's common for older dining chairs to have some fabric on them. The fabric is usually found on the seat, but is also sometimes found on the back of the chair. Unlike sofas and recliners, reupholstering a dining chair is very easy and can be done in a few hours. This means that it's simple to transform your chairs into a beautiful matching set for your dining room.

When you're looking for a dining table at a used furniture store, check to make sure the leaf still functions properly, if it has one. Older dining tables, like sofas, are incredibly sturdy, so there's a good chance that it still does. Wooden dining tables can easily be made to look like new by refinishing them, so don't worry about cosmetic blemishes on the table.

Bedroom

Used furniture stores are a great source for bed frames, bookcases, dressers, and end tables. All of these items of furniture are timeless—they rarely become dated, and instead take on a vintage quality when they get older. Like with dining tables, these items can also be refinished to remove any cosmetic blemishes and restore them to like-new condition.

Finally, the most important thing to keep in mind when you're decorating your new place is to keep checking used furniture stores often. Inventory is constantly rotating as people buy items and new items come in. It may take you a while to find a sofa or dining table that you like, but it's worth the wait—older furniture is built to last, and you can easily fix most cosmetic damage to transform them into items that look brand new.