A first flat, kitted out for under £500
The lists that circulate before a first move are written by people selling things. They run to two hundred items, include a garlic press and a matching towel set, and land somewhere north of a thousand pounds before anyone has bought food. A first flat needs far less than that, and the things it genuinely needs are worth buying properly rather than buying cheaply. What follows is a budget that covers a one-bedroom flat or a student room for under £500, built around the distinction between what you need in the first week and what can wait until you know how you actually live there.
Spend properly on four things
A small number of items are used every single day and are miserable when cheap. A proper pillow determines whether you sleep; a single good frying pan does more work than a seven-piece set; a sharp knife is the difference between cooking and not bothering; and a drying rack quietly solves laundry in a flat with no outside space.
Everything else in the flat can be the budget version, second-hand, or absent for a month without any real cost. This is the main saving available on a first move, and it is a bigger one than any voucher code: the list gets shorter rather than cheaper.
The second principle is to delay anything decorative. Furniture, storage and the look of the place should follow the way you use the rooms, which you cannot know before living there. Buying a bookcase in week one produces a bookcase in the wrong place.
The room-by-room budget
These are realistic British prices for own-brand or entry-level items bought new, with second-hand alternatives noted where they are genuinely better value. Buying during the Back to School window or the January Sales takes a meaningful amount off the total.
| Room | What to get | Budget |
|---|---|---|
| Bedroom | Duvet, two pillows, two sets of bedding, mattress protector | £90 |
| Kitchen | Frying pan, saucepan, chef’s knife, chopping board, wooden spoon, colander | £75 |
| Kitchen | Plates, bowls, mugs, glasses and cutlery for four | £45 |
| Kitchen | Kettle and toaster | £35 |
| Bathroom | Towels, bath mat, shower curtain, toilet brush, bin | £45 |
| Cleaning | Vacuum, mop and bucket, cloths, basic products | £70 |
| Laundry | Clothes airer, iron, laundry basket | £45 |
| Living | Lamp, extension leads, curtains or a blind | £55 |
| Toolkit | Screwdriver set, hammer, tape measure, picture hooks, torch | £25 |
| Total | £485 |
The vacuum is the line most worth revisiting. A cheap upright will do a small flat, but it is also the single most common item to be given away or sold on locally in good condition. A second-hand one at a third of the price releases around £30 of the cleaning budget, which is better spent upgrading the pillows and the pan, the two things a cheap version never stops annoying you about.
The £485 budget by room
- Kitchen £155
- Bedroom £90
- Cleaning £70
- Living £55
- Bathroom £45
- Laundry £45
- Toolkit £25
What to buy second-hand, and what not to
Furniture, in almost all cases. Sofas, chests of drawers, dining tables, desks and bookcases are made to last decades, depreciate immediately, and are available free or nearly free on local listings from people who simply need them gone. Checking that upholstered furniture carries its fire safety label is the one thing to look for, and it is a legal requirement for anything sold in the UK.
Small kitchen appliances, tools and anything with a motor are also reasonable second-hand buys if you can test them. What is not worth it: mattresses, pillows, duvets and anything else that absorbs, where hygiene and support both degrade invisibly. Buy those new even at the cost of buying the cheapest version.
Electrical items bought privately carry no warranty and no consumer protection worth the name, as our guide to online shopping rights explains: a private seller only has to describe the item accurately. For anything expensive enough to matter, buying from a business, even if the item is refurbished, keeps your rights intact.
The first month, not the first week
Once you have lived in the flat for a few weeks, you will have a real list rather than an imagined one: the shelf that would fix the bathroom, the corner that turns out to be dark, the pan size you keep wanting. That list is short, specific and worth spending on, and it is the point at which home and garden offers become useful rather than tempting.
It is also the moment to set the household admin up properly, before it drifts. Getting the energy tariff, the broadband contract and the contents insurance right in the first month is worth more over a year than the entire equipment budget above, and our guide to the annual contract review covers how to do it.
Summary
Spend on the four things you touch daily, take the furniture second-hand, buy nothing decorative in the first month, and let the flat tell you what it needs. Under £500 covers a properly equipped one-bedroom place, and less than that if you time it with the late-summer or January sales. Browse home and garden deals, check the events calendar for the next sale window, or start from all current deals.