The Dollar Tree Decor Find Design Experts Swear By

Mar 26, 2024

The Dollar Tree has always come in handy for home essentials on a budget. With the store's seasonal changes and constant restocking of new items, you are likely to always find something fun and intriguing on the shelf. For interior designers like Cassie Tonsmeire and Angela Wilson Lee, the home décor aisle at Dollar Tree is where they find some of their favorite pieces. The two tell Southern Living that the selection of vases is a budget-friendly design hack that they swear by.

The options are versatile, with numerous shapes, sizes, textures, and colors to fit any aesthetic or use. You'll find vases tall and skinny, wide and short, and smooth and textured. There are solid metal ones and glass options that are clear or tinted in hues of pink, red, blue, and green. While each designer's vase preference differs, they both agree that if you pick up a few vases at the dollar store, you'll be able to find more than one spot in your home where they can add a little function or character.

Dollar Tree's clear vase selection is vast, with some featuring bumps and ripples of texture, and others with tapered necks or fish bowl round styles. You can fill the bottoms of the larger vases with marbles, water beads, or glass rocks, and the smaller ones are perfect for tea candles or seashells. Because of their assortment of sizes, they can also make great floral containers. Tonsmeire told Southern Living that she prefers clear and traditional styles for vases and that "tall and short, square or round," she said, "for flower styling anywhere!"

A different approach to the design hack can be taken with the pursuit of vibrant and bold vases. Sometimes that can mean red or pink translucent glass or metal vases of solid color of blues and greens. To fill these colorful vases, Wilson Lee moves toward greenery. "Live plants clean and freshen the air while introducing beautiful colors and dimensions. I used vessels from the Dollar Tree to add a classic and unexpected touch."

The budget-friendly store also features many galvanized vases and container options, perfect for the trending farmhouse aesthetic. Los Angeles-based lead designer at MirrorCoop, John Lindon, is another designer with an eye on dollar store vases, the metal options with rope detailing his personal preference for a rustic look. "They'll look perfect in your garden, on your porch, or even on the hardwood floors of your living room," he told Insider. "No need to make DIY versions when you can pick 'em up for a buck."

One can go simple with their vases and use them as they come, but getting creative with some DIY projects is also incredibly fun. While the dollar store has endless glass vases, maybe you prefer an earthier ceramic or stone look. Caro Rostran has an excellent Youtube tutorial on creating ceramic-esque vases from glass. She begins by mixing her paint with baking soda until it reaches her desired grittiness and then paints the vessel entirely, applying a few coats. She smooths over any unwanted imprints on the glass and adds additional texture using spackle. After letting it dry, she rubs coffee grounds into the vase to give it a nice weathered look.

Embellishing your vases is just as easy as painting them, so consider getting crafty with geometric patterns and metallic designs, as shown by The Craft Patch. With just some clear glass vases from the dollar store and gold foiled paper, they created a unique look in minutes. Simply wrap the paper around the vase and tape it into place, using the seam side as the back. You could also hot glue this or look for foils that are self-adhesive.