How to Get Beautiful Prints Your Home for FREE!

Looking for budget friendly art for your home? How do you feel about free? Sharing how to get free art for your home, cheap art for your walls, download wall art in just a few minutes on your computer!

I will admit I do not have a beautiful art collection you would find in a gallery or that would make an art enthusiast swoon.

But I do have prints in my home that I love, look beautiful and are unique to me. And the best part? They were free.

I don’t want to have trendy prints (I am looking at you, farmhouse sign) or walk into my neighbor’s home and see that she has the same print as me.

Although I admit that I do love myself a good Studio McGee framed still or landscape piece.

When we add unique and beautiful art to our homes, it helps to warm up the spaces we inhabit every day and brings a little joy to our daily lives.

And how often do you change your mind on what you want adorning your walls? Once a year? Semi-annually? Every holiday?

It doesn’t matter what you’re looking for, I am going to tell you where to find it. I am so excited to share this with you because I think it is such an amazing and economical option for us all to use in our homes! Whether it be an occasional holiday change-up or a Spring refresh, I am going to show you how you can add beautiful prints to your home for FREE!

The New York Public Library has uploaded original images of books and documents to a digital library and given us all access to the amazing, unique prints. With a quick download and click of a button to print, you can effortlessly have beautiful FREE print art in your home.

Check out my step-by-step instructions below.

I love the aging on the pages of the book that this was copied from.

Printed on white cardstock in my personal printer

See how I made this entry table a day!!

How to get FREE prints for your home:

Follow the steps below:

Go to this website link for the New York Public Library Digital Collections. They have thousands of free, original prints that can be downloaded and used by the public as long as it is only used for private use in your home. (If you want to use a print for anything other than inside your home, please check the box under the search bar for “public domain” to be sure to choose an image that does not have any known copyright limitations. There are 250,000+ images available for public domain)
Enter a search word. In my case I entered ‘botanicals’, but you could enter what you want. Birds, Christmas, Winter, etc.
Choose the category you want to browse and begin your search for prints that interest you.
Choose the print you want to have in your home. (I looked through the prints available and found one that I loved because of the vintage look of the print.)
Choose “760px” download option and download the print to your computer.
Open the download file, place some heavy cardstock in the printer, and print it. Right at home! **You can also send the download to Costco or office supply store and have it printed on a larger piece of cardstock for a larger frame as long as it is public domain.**

Two of my favorite ways to make my prints look more expensive?

1. Use a heavy-weight paper.

2. Mat my prints and then place in a frame.

Using a heavier cardstock to print on makes the colors more vibrant and the print look more expensive. You can use textured cardstock (which is what I like) to add another layer dimension to the print. Then I like to mat my prints. It makes them look more expensive and adds one more layer of depth to the print.

You can pick up precut mats in various sizes at Hobby Lobby and Michaels. I always use a coupon for them and I always buy my frames when they are on sale. You can get a nice print, on heavy cardstock, matted inside a frame for under $10.