Apartment life is often regarded as something generic or less comfortable than living in a house. However, people everywhere are living in apartments and enjoy calling them ‘home.’ Here are some tips for apartment living so that you can transform your living space – and perception – into a comfortable reality.
1. Floor to Ceiling Curtains
Nothing says “apartment” like those cheap factory blinds that were probably on your apartment windows when you moved in. Investing in some nice floor to ceiling curtains helps to add some warmth to your space as blinds can make an apartment feel cold and blank.
Curtains also make rooms feel bigger as they give the impression of length to walls and allow you to easily let natural light right in.
2. Treat Your Space like it isn’t Temporary
While your apartment may not be permanent it doesn’t need to feel that way. Even if your lease is just one year you should take the time to put a personal touch on your place.
This might include art on the walls, pictures around coffee tables or hung in the halls, comfortable furniture, and a kitchen stocked with food and cooking supplies.
3. Paint the Walls
Nine times out of 10 apartment walls are painted a stock white. If your landlord agrees to let you paint, add some color to your apartment (and your life!) by painting your bedroom, kitchen and bathrooms colors that make you feel good.
Painted walls will give your rooms a more personal touch and will create a sort of warmth that helps improve your mood while at home.
4. Organize like Martha Stewart
A small home can often feel like it is closing in around you. Rather than let your stuff clutter up your rooms spend some time organizing your apartment so that you can enjoy your living space.
The kitchen and bathroom in particular are two areas where organization is imperative; consider installing additional shelving, overhead hooks or pot racks, hooks within closets or under counter doors, and any other areas that can keep things out of sight and more organized.
5. Use Personal Items to Make Your Home more Sentimental
A lot of times people who live in apartments try to minimize their things to a point where they really don’t have anything that isn’t immediately disposable.
Rather than maintain this sort of transient thought mentality, consider bringing home things that are highly sentimental or valuable to you.
Buy one piece of awesome artwork, a mask you got on vacation, the coffee table your grandpa made or the unique chair you got at the store.
From there design the rest of your apartment around these key pieces and you’ll have a minimalistic apartment with a sentimental and homey feel.