A proper home recording studio doesn't need to cost thousands. Here's exactly what to buy, what to skip, and how to treat your room on a budget.
TL;DR
You can build a genuinely capable home studio for under £500. Prioritise an audio interface, decent headphones, and basic acoustic treatment over expensive monitors. A Focusrite Scarlett, Audio-Technica ATH-M50x, and some DIY panels will get you further than you think.
The Essential Gear List (And Nothing Else)
Let's cut through the GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) and talk about what you actually need. At absolute minimum, a home studio requires four things: a computer you already own, an audio interface, headphones, and a DAW. That's it. Everything else is a nice-to-have.
For your audio interface, the Focusrite Scarlett Solo (around £100) or the slightly more capable Scarlett 2i2 (around £140) remain the best budget options in 2025. Clean preamps, solid build quality, and driver support that just works. The PreSonus AudioBox USB 96 is a decent alternative at about £80 if budget is really tight.
Headphones before monitors — this is controversial but hear us out. In an untreated room, monitors lie to you. The reflections from your walls colour everything, and you'll make mixing decisions based on your room rather than your music. A pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50x (£120) or Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro (£115) will give you far more reliable results until you can properly treat your space.
Acoustic Treatment on a Real Budget
This is where most bedroom producers go wrong: they spend everything on gear and nothing on their room. A £2000 pair of monitors in an untreated bedroom will sound worse than £200 monitors in a treated one. That's not an exaggeration.
The cheapest effective treatment is DIY panels made from Rockwool or Knauf insulation slabs. A 1200x600x100mm slab costs about £8-12, and wrapping four of them in breathable fabric gives you absorption panels that perform comparably to commercial products costing ten times more. Place two behind your listening position, two at the first reflection points on your side walls, and you've transformed your room.
Bass traps in the corners are the next priority. Thicker panels (150mm+) placed across room corners address the low-frequency buildup that makes every bedroom studio sound boomy. You can build effective bass traps for under £50 in materials. YouTube has dozens of tutorials for this — it's a weekend project that'll change your mixes forever.
Choosing a DAW When You're Starting Out
Your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is where you'll spend 90% of your production time, so this choice matters. The good news: there's no wrong answer in 2025, and several excellent options are free or cheap.
If you're on a Mac, GarageBand comes pre-installed and is genuinely powerful for a free application. When you outgrow it, Logic Pro at £200 is arguably the best value in professional DAWs. For PC users, Cakewalk by BandLab is completely free and fully featured — it used to cost £400 when it was called SONAR.
Reaper costs just £48 for a personal licence and is beloved by audio engineers for its efficiency and customisability. It's not the prettiest DAW, but it's incredibly stable and can handle anything you throw at it. Ableton Live Intro at £79 is worth considering if you're into electronic music or live performance — its session view is still unmatched for improvisation and experimentation.
The £500 Budget Breakdown
Here's exactly how we'd spend £500 on a home studio in 2025. Audio interface: Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 at £140. Headphones: Audio-Technica ATH-M50x at £120. Microphone: Rode NT1 5th Gen at £180 (if you need to record vocals; skip if you're purely producing). Acoustic treatment: DIY Rockwool panels, about £60 in materials. That's your lot, and it's all you need.
If you don't need a microphone, redirect that £180 toward studio monitors — the PreSonus Eris E3.5 at £90 or the Mackie CR3-X at £85 are solid entry points. Use the remaining budget for a decent mic stand and XLR cable when you eventually add a mic.
The gear you don't need yet: a hardware compressor, a MIDI keyboard (your computer keyboard works), expensive cables (cheap ones are fine for home use), a mixing desk (your interface is your mixing desk), or any plugin that costs money (see our free VST guide). Resist the urge to buy everything at once. Start minimal, learn your tools deeply, and upgrade strategically.
Making the Most of What You've Got
The single biggest upgrade to your home studio costs nothing: learn your room. Play commercially released music you know well through your headphones and monitors. Listen to how the bass translates, where the vocals sit, how the stereo field behaves. Your ears calibrating to your environment is worth more than any piece of gear.
Reference tracks are your best friend in a home studio. Keep a playlist of professionally mixed and mastered tracks in your genre and A/B against them constantly while mixing. This compensates for room issues and trains your ears simultaneously. Every professional engineer does this — it's not cheating, it's craft.
Remember: the history of music is full of classic records made in terrible rooms with basic gear. What matters is what you do with what you have. Your bedroom studio in 2025 is more capable than most professional studios were in the 1990s. The only thing standing between you and great music is time, practice, and persistence.