Fall-ify Your Home Without Spending a Dime

Walk through your home and look at what you already own with fresh eyes. That chunky caramel-colored throw buried in the linen closet? Fall. The wooden bowl tucked at the back of your cupboard you swore you’d bring to all summer BBQs? Fall. The wicker basket currently holding three magazines that have Brangelina on the cover? Fall. (Let it go. They're over.)

Pull out plush, cozy blankets you already own and drape one over the arm of a sofa or the end of a bed to make the room feels warm and lived-in instead of looking like you got jumped by a fall decor aisle. If your summer throws are lightweight but textured, keep them in the mix too, because a soft, rumpled stack of layers is exactly the burrow-in feeling you're after.

Remember when changing your room's whole personality meant moving your bed to the other side of the room, taping a few magazine pages of Axl Rose to the wall and declaring yourself a new person? The adult fall-ify version is moving a chair closer to a lamp, pointing the sofa toward the fireplace or pulling a small table beside a reading chair to give it actual purpose instead of letting it become the official landing pad for receipts, lip balm and that one mysterious screw you've been hoping is not that important.

Fall is basically a season-long invitation to turn the lights down low. Kill the harsh overhead glare, scatter a few lamps around and let their warm little pools soften every corner they touch. Round up your candles onto a single tray and light them together and suddenly your living room has that low amber flicker you usually only get at a nice restaurant right before they hand you the check.

Fall tends to make us appreciate anything that looks like it wandered out of a log cabin or library. Hunt down your wooden trays, bowls, cutting boards, frames and stools, then group a few together so the room picks up that warm coziness that only wood gives off. A few branches, pinecones or acorns from your yard can also add seasonal texture. Just make sure anything you bring indoors is clean and dry so your seasonal decorating project doesn’t include a mysterious bug infestation.

Nothing says sweater weather like a stack of books that look like they belong next to a crackling fire. Pull the chunky, warm-toned ones out to a coffee table or nightstand and stack them flat with a candle or small bowl perched on top. Stand your Harry Potter collection front and center while you're at it, because if any books are going to make a room feel like autumn, it's the ones set in a drafty magic castle.

Your bedroom should feel like the kind of place you never want to crawl out of on a cold morning. Fold a heavier blanket across the foot of the bed, swap in pillowcases you already own in richer textures or deeper tones and pull a lamp close for a soft light to snuggle up and read by. The goal is a warm burrow you sink into, not a page torn from a catalog called Autumnal Serenity: Volume 7.

The entryway is where your house announces what season it thinks it is. Kick the sandals to the back of the closet and stand a pair of boots by the door, sling a chunky scarf over a hook, toss your keys into a small copper tray that catches the light. One or two warm touches here set the whole autumn tone before anyone even kicks off their shoes.

The easiest fall move is taking a few things away, not piling more on. Send the July stuff on vacation and clear the summer clutter off your counters so the warm pieces you kept aren't fighting for space. Then stop, because a calm, uncluttered room is its own kind of cozy and your home does not need to look like a pumpkin patch detonated in the living room to feel like the season has arrived.