How to Find Cheap Pictures to Decorate Your Home

If you’re on a tight budget and looking for a inexpensive way to decorate a room using cheap methods, consider this idea.

This will likely only work for small sized pictures of 8 × 10 or reverse and 9 × 12 or smaller.

You’ll need a color printer. One that prints moderately decent pictures. A photo printer does wonders, but even a basic printer like an HP printer does exceptionally well in most cases.

It’s your choice concerning whether you’d like to use photo paper or just regular multi-purpose printing paper. I, for one, like basic paper but it really depends on what I go for.

The next step is to hunt for images you can print off. If you want to get an artsy look, the best kind to go for, in my opinion, are artistic images, such as works of art.

Consider a few of the following…

watercolor paintings
oil paintings
pastel paintings
pencil drawings
colored pencil drawings

…and more!

My preference is watercolor paintings. If I’m going for an artsy look, I don’t really want to go for something that looks too much like a regular photo, so I tend to lean toward watercolor paintings and colored pencil drawings. Things that you can tell someone sketched or painted right off.

Once you’ve decided what you want, you can hunt for images searching through Google Images, Yahoo Images, etc. My favorite place is Google Images.

Isn’t That Like Stealing?

The first thought that might come to mind is, “isn’t this like stealing?”

Well, I’ve always felt that most, if not all, webmasters would watermark the images they didn’t want taken or make them too small to be of much use to anyone. I know this isn’t always the case, but seems to be the case the majority of the time.

And my second thought is that most webmasters aren’t actually trying to combat the personal or private use of images (in which they’d have no idea their images were being printed in the first place) but are actually trying to combat web theft so that other webmasters don’t put their images on their websites and use them as their own.

Maybe I’m wrong? But I’ve always felt that was a fair assessment and have no qualms with printing off a few pictures I like as long as they are strictly used in private.

So, if you feel the same way, then let’s talk about the next steps…

How to Get Cheap Images for Home Use

If you’re after photos that are around 8 × 10 in size, then you’ll want to look for images that are at least 800 × 1000 pixels. For smaller prints, such as 4 × 6, you could look for images that are around 400 × 600 pixels.

But keep in mind, sometimes you can get away with less if the pixel sizes are close to the size you want. You can later enlarge them as long as you aren’t enlarging them by much.

Let’s start a sample search, so you can see what I mean…

Go to Google Images and type in the word watercolor.

Once you’ve done that, a group of images should pop up.

What to Look For…

Below each image title, you’ll see the size of each photo. In this case, you’re looking for a photo that you can print on a 8 × 10 piece of paper. After doing a little searching, let’s say you come across one that’s 866 × 1052 pixels. You’ve decided after observing it, that you like it.

So this is one you want to keep to print off later. To do this… click on the image. Once you’ve done that, you should see a Google Image window pane that pops up. It shows you the page that the image is taken from, but you don’t care about that.

You just want the image.

You’ve got two choices here. You see a link that says, “See full-size image.”

You can either click on that link to check out a larger version of the picture before you save it or you could simply save it right away.

Let’s say you want to check it out first. So, click on the link “See full-size image.” Once you’ve done that, you get a close look at the image. This will give you an idea of whether you still want it or not.

Let’s say you do.

So, to download the image, you would simply right click on your mouse on the image and select “Save Image As…” and voila! you’ve got the image.

Once you’ve gone on several hunts to find the images you want, it’s likely you’ll have to resize the images so they’ll fit the page you want to print them on. You’ll want to open up a program that will allow you to do that.

Most image programs will allow you to do so. For me, I use Adobe PhotoDeluxe or Corel Paint Shop Pro. But here are some free image editors you might want to consider if you’re currently in need of one.

Once you’ve resized them, it’s time to print them off.

Quick Ideas on How to Display Them

To display them, let’s say you don’t feel like just hanging them up as they are but you can’t afford a bunch of picture frames. Well then, it’s no question you should go for something like matboard. It’s cheap and it’s classy. It’s also available at just about any art store. To name one in particular: Hobby Lobby.

Once you’ve gotten the matboard, you can simply hang your pictures on the wall and enjoy the view.

Yet, let’s not also forget many thrift stores, such as the Salvation Army, Goodwill or Volunteers of America have pictures frames for next to nothing. So, if framing your pictures is what you’re after, the thrift store should be one of the first places you check out.

There are plenty of ways to decorate your home with pictures. With small ones, doing a group set usually looks best.

You could create a whole wall full and give it an “art gallery” look and feel or you could create a small group. Say 3-5 images in one group along the wall. You could place them vertical, horizontal… which ever way you want.

You can even decorate your refrigerator with these images or create a collage on a bulletin board–and consider it a wall-mounted photo album.

And let’s not forget, you could also frame some of these photos and place a few around the house on a couple of tables.

The sky’s the limit, but remember…

…these photos should be for home use only. I would not recommend public viewing of these photos in places such as an office where people frequent.

Keep it personal. Then you can be sure you’re not stepping on any “legal” toes. And you can enjoy the beauty each photo possesses in the privacy of your home for as long as you like.

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