In this article I share my advice on how to create a Harry Potter inspired room on a budget. If you are outside of the US/Canada, look for similar stores and auctions in your own region.
Very few of us have a castle-size budget for our desired Hogwarts-themed room. However, creating an amazing and authentic Harry Potter themed room can be cheaper than you think.
The trick is to shop for used furniture and accessories.
Vintage, antique, and simply used items for this project can be purchased at a low price because traditional home décor and furniture style is not currently popular. The resale market for stuffy furnishings is soft, and you should use it to your advantage.
Approximate Budget for a Harry Potter Room
This is how much you should expect to spend on a full Harry Potter room if you stay on a budget in Midwest. Other regions may differ.
- Furniture – $500
- Rug – $150
- Trunks – $40
- Light fixtures – $100
- Wall decor – $150
- Decorative accessories – $100
- Tabletop items – $60
For a total of about $1,200 you can have an amazing Harry Potter inspired room in your house.
Furniture
Furniture represents the big ticket items in your room, so saving your hard-earned money here is most important.
My advice for saving on furniture is to have a standing arrangement for transportation. T he faster you can haul away a large piece of furniture, the cheaper you can get it.
Upholstery is usually cheaper than all wood furniture, and extra-large pieces can be cheaper than medium size pieces because of difficulty moving. Matched sets are more expensive than building an eclectic set from individual pieces.
I got this amazing English oak desk and hutch for $60 (with auction fees and taxes!) from an online estate auction. All I had to do was arrange pickup and transportation the next day, for which I am eternally grateful to my friend’s husband.
Online auctions present a savings opportunity since buying furniture sight unseen is not for everyone. In my practice, however, occasionally donating or throwing away a $30 piece is completely justified by the savings I got on the rest of the pieces.
I got most of the furniture in my Harry Potter room from auctionohio.com, and I cannot sing them enough praises for the amazing combination of service, price, and quality.
Best places to shop for furniture, in the order of increasing price:
- Local online auctions
- Local estate sales
- Thrift stores
- Facebook Marketplace and Craig’s List
- Garage sales
- Antique stores
If you are planning to get used upholstered furniture or rugs, I recommend buying an upholstery and carpet cleaner, such as Bissell True Green.
What to look for when buying furniture:
- Bed – look for a solid wood bed with either posters/canopy or a high headboard. Dark colors and intricate carvings are the best, especially, for Slytherin rooms.
- Desk – traditional style solid wood desk with drawers. Medium or dark wood stain. I would stay away from painted desks in white or light colors, but it would depend on the house or personality you are trying to buy for.
- Seating – traditional sofas and chairs in the colors of your Hogwarts house or black. Chesterfield sofas, leather chairs. Consider using the furniture you own and buy slip covers to represent your house.
- Side tables – even Slytherin common room had simple stool-like side tables. No need to get fancy here. Solid wood, dark or medium stain, simple form. Or use a trunk.
- Dining tables and chairs – depending on the situation, you can go simple with the Great Hall at Hogwarts student dining or fancy with 12 Grimmauld Place dining. Stick to the dark wood stain. Mixed and matched pub or kitchen chairs or Gryffindor and fancy formal chairs for Slytherin.
- Dressers and buffets – traditional dark stain wood dressers. I would stay away from Provincial or fancy batwing handles, but that’s just my choice. They may look amazing in a young witch’s feminine bedroom.
Rugs
For an authentic Hogwarts inspired room, you need to get an oriental rug. This is where buying used gets tough.
First, used rugs usually need a thorough cleaning. This may become expensive and cumbersome. Second, used oriental rugs for sale are often very nice antique wool rugs that still cost a lot of money even if the deal is great. You will likely have a choice of paying the same price for a used wool rug or a new polyester rug.
Best places to shop, not necessarily in the order of increasing price:
- Local online auctions, usually for old wool rugs that need cleaning ($100-$500)
- Craig’s list or Facebook Marketplace (varies)
- Wayfair (honestly, it’s awesome) ($100-$300)
- Local interior decor stores ($100-$500)
- Local estate sales, usually for nice quality wool rugs at a discount ($300-$700)
What to look for in a rug:
- Large size. Try to cover at least 60% of the room.
- Traditional design. The paisley oriental design is the best.
- Smaller elements. Look for rugs without large expanses of the same color.
Light Fixtures
Prepare to pay more for the lamps and chandeliers than you paid for the furniture.
It appears, Hogwarts was not electrified during Harry’stenure there, so the lamps used in the movie were oil lamps. For an authentic look, buy converted oil lamps with a brass body and hurricane glass. The outer shade should be either brass or ball glass without flowery painting (that’s the actual name for this type of shade – ball shade).
Getting a dupe of Hogwarts chandeliers is even more challenging than replicating the lamps, so my advice here is to shop home improvement and decor stores for traditional brass chandeliers and wagon wheel-like chandeliers with clear glass shades. Searching on Craig’s list and Facebook Marketplace is also an option.
When setting up your chandelier, if possible, make the bulbs face up, like the proper oil wicks.
Because of the lamps’ rarity and moderate shipping costs, you need to open up your search geography, so a good place to look is online auctions like eBay and shopgoodwill.com.
Best places to shop for light fixtures:
- Local antique stores, especially, large antique malls
- Thrift stores, especially, if you are handy and willing to swap lamp parts
- Shopgoodwill.com
- eBay
- Keep an eye on online auctions like hibid.com
Trunks
Steamer trunks are an essential Harry Potter decor item, and fortunately, they are widely available, bot used and new. And while Pottery Barn Teen sells amazing Harry Potter branded trunks, there are plenty of original authentic vintage trunks on the market.
Nice and clean vintage trunks in sale-ready condition go for about $100 where I am, but if you do not mind having some fun with spray paint, you can find very cheap trunks with some dirt and rust on them, which you can turn into an awesome accessory in the color of your sorted house.
Best places to buy vintage trunks:
- Estate sales
- Local online estate auctions
- Antique stores
- Select home decor retailers
Wall Decor
Paintings
Nothing is more iconic for Hogwarts’ interior decor than old portrait paintings in gold frames. Ordering such paintings can be expensive, though, but only until you realize how cheap framed prints can be on the resale market.
What you are looking for are heavy gold frames, and what’s inside them is irrelevant. I found that there are not many takers for large (22″ at the smallest dimension) floral office-like 1980s prints in frames on estate auctions, so a great frame can be had for as little as $1. Smaller frames are usually more expensive, but you can easily find them for less than $20, just look for ugly prints.
Now you need to find an old style portrait painting of your liking, which you download for free from the National Gallery of Art website (and other repositories of publicly available art). Another option is to make your own art using generative AI, such as Midjourney.
You can print your art on paper at Walmart.com or if you feel extra authentic, canvas. I used easycanvasprints.com, and they are very reasonably priced. Pop the art into the gold frame, attach it with staples or tape, and you have an amazing piece of Hogwarts-inspired art on the cheap.
Natural History Art Prints
Hogwarts is a witcraft and wizarding school, and a lot of time in class is devoted to the study of magical and poisonous plants and animals. The classrooms are full of materials and exhibits that allow students to explore the natural world for its properties. Thus, the old natural history prints are a perfect fit.
The best place to get these prints is eBay, and I wrote a very detailed article about choosing the right prints and framing them in the Hogwarts spirit.
Tapestries and Hangings
Famously, both Slytherin and Gryffindor common rooms had medieval tapestries decorating their walls. Real tapestries are not in our budget, but we can simulate the effect by buying fabric or wallpaper with tapestry designs on them. Here is an option for the Lady and the Unicorn design from Spoonflower (they also sell the Unicorn in Captivity fabric):
You can also look for tapestry designs on Etsy and eBay.
Mirrors
There is no need to buy an expensive replica of the Mirror of the Erised (though, it does look amazing). Hogwarts and the wizarding world had other mirrors doing a great job reflecting the witches and wizards, so get on with the program.
The cheapest way to shop for a Harry Potter room mirror is around your own house. You are likely to own a mirror in a dark wood or black frame, preferably, an ornate one. If you have a mirror that would do well, but has the wrong frame color, then spray paint is your friend.
If you don’t have a mirror to fit this need, then head to your local thrift store or antique store. You can usually find a very nice mirror there for $30 to $50.
For Slytherins fully committed to the beat, there is also a technique to age the mirror by partially removing the reflective paint. Such aging would match the mirrors seen in the Slytherin common room as well as in the Black family Grimmauld Place house.
Decorative Accessories
Desktop Accessories
Let’s put it plainly, you need desktop accessories if your Harry Potter room has a writing desk. Both the Gryffindor and the Slytherin common room movie depictions have multiple desks. Students study for their classes, play games, or simply hang around them.
There is also a cornucopia of desktop accessories in Dumledore’s office. If you rewatch the movies or look for pictures online, there are plenty of educational decor options you can choose from. Here are just my favorites: magnifying glasses, hourglasses, glass orbs, quills, old books, brass objects (animals, measuring devices, scales), and old tools.
These can be found in all sorts of places, from thrift stores to garage sales, you just need to know what to look for. As a general rule, I pay attention to practical objects with educational purposes made of glass and metal.
Decor
These are general decorative items, and you should be on the lookout for vintage items that reference the natural world, travel, and working tools. Animal figurines can symbolize your sorted house or important wizarding world animals such as owls and dragons.
My budget for these decor objects is $25 per item, and I shop at estate sales, ShopGoodwill, eBay, thrift stores, and antique stores.
Tabletop and Serving Pieces
Trust me, you need to get these.
Even if you are not decorating for an amazing Harry Potter themed party (and you may as well, once your room is ready), these are cheap must-haves that will instantly give your room that authentic Hogwarts je ne sais quoi.
At the very least, you must buy silverplate or pewter goblets. These were the drinking vessels of choice at Hogwarts, and I know why – they are not easy to break. In addition to goblets, you should consider silverplate trays, pitchers, vases, and all those pretty jars available on a dime at your local thrift store or antique mall.
In fact, I don’t believe these items are even available new now, as there is a glut of dirt-cheap silverplate on the used markets. If the silver is tarnished or rubbed off, even better. This will look more authentic.
For those actually planning a party, I would recommend looking into buying old sets of silverplate on estate auctions. These are, again, very inexpensive. And you may even end up using them yourself. We do.
Branded Merch
Since these are your most expensive items, to save some money, buy them sparingly.
I am a huge fan of the Pottery Barn Teen Harry Potter collection. It’s gorgeous. It’s amazing. It’s also expensive. Thus, the items that we bought from their collection were purchased as gifts for holidays and birthdays.
We also brought some souvenirs from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, and these are being used in the room, like the quill and ink and magic wands.
If you don’t have the budget for a beautiful branded piece you want, look for used ones on eBay. I bought a wizards’ chess set and a golden snitch night light there. Check out Etsy for some handmade creative items.
And remember that setting up your room with everyday items in Hogwarts spirit will give your branded accessories a chance to truly shine.