How to Decorate a Home If You’ve Only Ever Lived in an Apartment
Home ownership is a key goal for many Americans despite the financial and environmental challenges posed by today’s real estate market, and the transition from renting an apartment to owning a home is itself a challenge in many ways. One of these challenges is adjusting your approach to furnishing and decorating your living spaces, especially if you’re moving from a small rental to a large home.
Furnishing your own home can be different from turning your rental into a comfortable space because the scale is different: budgets need to be larger because you usually take up more space, purchases tend to be longer term because you don’t worry about the lease ending , and suddenly that couch you’ve been moving from place to place since college is no longer socially acceptable. Here’s how to approach decorating your home if you’ve only ever lived in an apartment.
Pause and plan
Step one is to take a moment and slow down, resisting the urge to rush in as quickly as possible. Moving into an apartment is often an attempt to make existing furniture work in some way in a new space, which encourages a haphazard approach and a utilitarian feel. However, the key to decorating your home is what is called ” slow decorating “:
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Instead of just moving all the furniture you have and filling the rooms with things, think about what you plan to use the room for.
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Measure each space so you can carefully select and arrange furniture.
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Choose furniture and accents that fit this plan. If the existing part works in this regard, great! Otherwise, consider whether it fits somewhere else or if it needs to be replaced with something else.
Think about the rooms
Moving from a small rental home to a sprawling home creates another psychological challenge: scale. Moving from a modest and perhaps even crowded place to a home with a much larger area can be challenging. Going from a small space you weren’t interested in to a more permanent space that requires a lot more stuff can be challenging.
Instead of trying to come up with a comprehensive plan (and budget) for furnishing and decorating your entire new space, take it apart room by room:
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Start with the rooms you will use immediately and constantly: the master bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and living room. Limiting your decisions to a specific room at a time will make the entire process more manageable, psychologically and financially.
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You can create a sense of cohesion by using the same “pop” color in each space and repeating decorative elements such as vases or other decorative objects. For example, wall art that’s part of a series can tie rooms together even if you approach them individually.
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Once you’ve set up the main rooms, you can tackle the remaining rooms one at a time.
Another reason this works is that small apartments often want to make rooms multi-functional, but homes often have separate rooms – dining rooms, dens, living rooms, etc. If you’re moving from a one-room space Was your office, living room, and workout space: By looking at each room individually, you’ll be able to envision what your ideal version of that space would be, rather than something you can fit in or that can easily be hidden out of sight.
Cover the space
In small rental spaces, we often make furniture decisions that solve problems associated with the apartment, such as not having a guest bedroom (resulting in a heavy and bulky sofa bed) or a lack of useful storage space (resulting in buying everything with extra storage space). , like the Admiral’s bed). But a home may not present the same challenges, so it’s time to ask yourself if that sofa bed or other storage item makes sense.
You should also consider the size of the room. For example, in an apartment, squeezing in a sofa and coffee table is all you need to make a living room, but a larger room in the house may feel empty, requiring more thought about how you’re going to use it. room. Will it be mostly viewing with lots of comfortable seating in front of the screen? Or do you want to create more space for conversation while sitting facing each other? Or, if you have the space, will it be both?
Finally, a home with more space may benefit from larger pieces of furniture—chunky furniture or large pieces of art on the walls. Remind yourself that you can go big and come home to home.