Affordable Decorating with Contact Paper

Most people are familiar with contact paper as a way to embellish drawers or shelves. However, you can use contact paper for so much more. This medium can be used to transform the look of outdated furniture, storage containers, or even permanent fixtures like windows or glass doors. Contact paper can also be very useful if you rent your home. Hopefully, the following ideas will inspire you to come up with your own creative ideas for using contact paper.

Decorate your glass.

With glass film coverings, you can give glass objects and furnishings a whole new look. This is a great way to update the look of glass cabinet doors or glass inserts in front doors or even French doors.

Imagine adding an etched, colored glass window film to the plain glass panels of your French doors. Now your door looks like a Victorian delight with stained glass windows. You can use this technique on any window in your home that you would like to transform into art glass.

You can also use glass film to:

• Make a bathroom window or glass shower doors look like frosted glass with an etched design like flowers or leaves.
• Give an ordinary glass vase or candle holder an artistic makeover.
• Turn a cheap, thrift store mirror into a unique vanity tray.
• Add interest to a glass tabletop by running a strip of window film down the middle, like a table runner.

Decorate old, worn wood furniture.

Thrift stores and closeout stores like Ross and Big Lots are great places to find small furniture items like end tables and nightstands. With a few finishing nails and some wood glue, you can make damaged or wobbly tables like new again.

You can also turn small furniture like this into eclectic, artistic furnishings with some contact paper and a little imagination. For instance, you can use contact paper that looks like marble or granite to cover the top of an end table. The table now looks like it has an expensive, stone top.

You can use contact paper to add texture as well. With patterns like grass cloth, basket weaves, cork, bamboo and leather, you can give objects like small bookcases, Dresser drawer fronts or cabinet doors, stools or chests a completely new, textured look.

Personalize furnishings in your kids’ rooms.

Children love to see just about anything with their name on it. Use a stencil to cut out letters on the contact paper and personalize your kids’ furnishings like:

• Headboards
• Chairs
• Bulletin boards
• Toy boxes
• Dressers
• Picture frames

Decorate your apartment or rental home.

Decorating can be a real challenge for those who rent. If you think it’s impossible to update a backsplash in a rental home, think again. You can use contact paper in creative ways to decorate permanent fixtures because it is possible to remove it later without damaging the surface underneath.

Just take a look at what savvy rental decorator, Karen H. did to create a unique metallic tile kitchen backsplash in her rental home. She used the grid on the back of the contact paper to cut small, 6 inch square tiles out, making the contact paper easier to apply. By alternating the grain of the paper, she created a checkerboard pattern that looked absolutely amazing once she was finished.

You could use a technique similar to this to update a plain tile backsplash by picking out a pattern or color of contact paper you really like. Cut out squares in the exact size of the tiles and then create your own unique pattern or design using the contact paper pieces as if they were decorative tiles.

Other decorating ideas include:

• Use contact paper to decorate cabinet doors or the shelves of an open utility closet.
• Cover up those out- of-date, mirrored closet doors with an elegant window film design such as bamboo plants or Victorian lace.
• Decorate the inner walls of your laundry alcove (where the washer and dryer are stored) with a classic damask pattern.
• Make your own wall art by framing pieces of contact paper.

Contact paper allows you to stay creative and busy, even on a tight decorating budget.