Tips for Furnishing your First Apartment

Whether it’s a house off-campus for your senior year or your first place after college, moving into a new place is a hassle. Once you get past all the struggles of moving, decorating your new home can be great! Here are a few ideas to make your new apartment feel like it’s your own space.

 

Decor Styles:

Modern

The modern style of home decor is minimalistic. Rather than over doing it on the decorations and accessories, modern styled homes let’s the space speak for itself. To achieve a modern style look for furniture with clean lines and simple shapes. Look for items made of natural materials like glass, wood, and concrete. The minimaliztic nature of the modern style emphasizes space of the room.

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Classic Contemporary

Classic Contemporary styled spaces are uncluttered and emphasize natural light. Furniture and decor are in bold, solid colors that contrast with one another. To achieve a contemporary look, search for furniture that has either straight lines and sharp corners or are composed of spherical shapes with wide curves. To decorate your walls, pick out a few bold, statement pieces to hang up. Otherwise leave the walls open to create a spacious effect, too much contrast within a room will make it seem small.

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Traditional

The traditional style of home decor is composed of classic shapes, colors, and styles. Traditional pieces of furniture will be richly colored with curved lines and tapered legs. These pieces will also often have intricate details or are highly patterned. When going with a traditional style of decor, people often arrange their furniture symmetrically. The traditional style is all about the little things.

squarespace.com

Eclectic

Rather than displaying a particular style like modern or traditional, eclectic decorating is more about displaying the personality of the home owner. Often eclectic styled rooms will be filled with mismatched,  complementary furniture and decor. Vintage pieces may be paired with bright colors and pieces from many styles may all be placed in one room.  Really, anything goes!

homecaprice.com

 

What You’ll Need:

Bedding

Congratulations! You’ve made it out of small dorm rooms and are done with the twin bed era of your life. If there’s one item you should splurge on, it’s definitely the bed. Good bed frames and comfortable bedding sets might be expensive, but sleep is the most important part of maintaining your energy on a consistent basis. You won’t regret spending a little extra on your new bed in the long run.

 

 

 

Kitchen

Either cooking for you in college was not an option or not worth all of the hassle. Take full advantage of your kitchen and invest in nice, solid kitchenware. A well-equipped kitchen is a smart, long-term move. You’ll save money over time because you won’t be buying replacements and it’ll be easier to prepare healthy food meals.  Start with the essentials. You need pots, pans, and dinnerware to start off with. When you save up a little pick yourself up something fancy like a quality blender or set of knives.

 

 

Living room

Since you’re no longer confined to the small space of college housing anymore, you finally have a space to unwind and relax in other than your bed! Pick up a few simple, comfortable seating options so you can have friends over without feeling cramped. Rather than opting for a couch right away, you may want to stick with a futon. Futons are much cheaper than couches and will give a friend some space to sleep if they need to crash at your place. For your living room you’ll want to have lots of storage so that the room never seems too cluttered with your personal items.

 

 

 

 

Bathroom

Communal bathrooms, be gone! Even if you have a couple of roommates in your new apartment that’s nothing comparison to sharing  your bathroom with the 20 other people on your hall. You can finally customize this space to fit your personal style and forget the sterile dorm bathrooms. Keep it clean and organized!

 

 

 

Home Decor

Go wild. You’re no longer confined to customizing one room, you have a whole apartment to cover now! Make your space feel like a home with cozy throw pillows and soft, stylish rugs. You’ll want to cover your walls with art and decor to give your space a live-in feel.