5 Low-Cost, Minimal-Waste Ways To Upgrade Your Living Space For Summer
We recently teamed up with The Financial Diet for a two-part newsletter series on refreshing your home for summer. You can read the original feature here.
Last month, we shared a few hands-on projects to refresh your space for summer on a budget. Now, we want to talk about the styling side.
We come back to these small-yet-impactful styling moves every season to make our spaces feel like the current moment.
1. Shop Your Own Home First
Before you hit up HomeGoods, do a lap through your space with fresh eyes. Take the vase that's been sitting on your nightstand for two years and put it on the coffee table. Swap the chunky knit throw draped over the couch for the lighter linen you haven't touched since last summer. Pull a pretty serving tray out of the kitchen cabinet and put it on the console by the door with a candle on top. It sounds almost too simple, but a familiar object in a different spot can help make it feel brand new.
2. Lean into Color Temperature and Light Texture
Think about what's currently on your couch, your bed, your dining chairs. If it's dark or a heavy fabric, that's your first swap. Pull out your lightest colored options: white, cream, soft sage. Do the same with textiles. Aim for linen, waffle, or cotton. These swaps immediately make a space feel airier. It's one of the lowest-effort shifts with one of the highest payoffs.
3. Rethink Your Vessels
Go to your kitchen and pull out every bowl, pitcher, jar, and glass you own. Now look at them differently: not as things that hold food or liquid, but as objects with shape, height, and texture. A wide ceramic bowl that usually sits in a cabinet becomes a centerpiece when you fill it with lemons or limes. A glass pitcher becomes a vase. A small juice glass holds a single stem beautifully. A wooden cutting board becomes a tray when you group a candle and a small plant on top of it. The trick is to stop seeing your everyday objects as functional and start seeing them as decorative.
4. Edit Down Rather Than Add
Pick one surface (your coffee table, your console, your kitchen counter) and clear everything off it. Then look at it empty. Now only add back what genuinely belongs there for summer. Think lighter and fewer pieces overall, especially for summer. If something looks dark and heavy, feels like the wrong season, or has just been there so long you stopped seeing it, leave it off. A quick check: if you had to style that surface from scratch today, would you choose that object? If the answer is no, it doesn't go back. Most surfaces are over-styled by default.
5. One Seasonal Anchor Per Surface
Once you've edited, you don’t need to add much to achieve that seasonal look and feel. Pick one object per surface that says "summer" and let it shine. Frame a photo from your favorite trip and prop it on the console. Make a single summer color the focal point of a surface (citrus colors, blue hues, and tropical tones are having a moment) and let everything else stay neutral around it. Bring in something with summer textures like a woven basket or a shell you picked up from the beach. You don't need to do this everywhere. Pick two or three surfaces, give each one its moment, and the whole space will feel as if it were styled with intention.
When Your Own Stuff Isn't Cutting It
If your own items leave you feeling uninspired, but you want to lean further into the summer aesthetic, that's exactly where Spruce Decor + Style (Spruce) comes in.
Whether that’s the “la dolce vita” feeling of the Italian coast, or the Americana moments from the shores of Nantucket, Spruce has decor boxes that you can rent, style, and return at the last summer sunset. Trends move fast, and the things you love in June might feel lackluster by August.
Renting from Spruce lets you fully commit to a look for the season without buying and storing decor you’ll only use for six weeks. Try our lemon-and-terracotta Mediterranean moment. Go all in on coastal stripes. And when fall rolls around, return it and start fresh: no bins, no clutter, no decor wasteland in your basement.