Just Bought Your Very First Apartment? Here are Tips for Decorating It
One of the most exciting times in anyone’s life is purchasing that seemingly impossible-to-make-happen first home. Whether you’ve been saving up for a decade or more or worked very hard over the last couple of years to get a deposit and other funds in order, it’s a memorable time when you purchase your first place.
If you’ve recently settled on an apartment or will do it soon, your next step is to start thinking about how you want to design the inside. Here are some decorating tips to note.
Clarify How You Plan to Use the Property
Start by clarifying how you want to live in your new place. If you know how you plan to use the property, it’s much easier to determine how best to set it up. For instance, you might want many entertaining zones if you have people over a lot, or you might work from home and need a dedicated office.
Some people need an exercise, yoga, or stretching area, while others need a little spot to do meditation or a reading nook. Others want a bedroom set up for their child to come and stay or are keen to make their apartment attractive to the opposite sex. It’s all about how you like to spend your time at home and the best way to design your property in turn.
Choose a Style You Like
Next, work out the design style you prefer. It’s best to come up with one particular option you want to stick with throughout the property to keep the look and feel consistent and make the home more comfortable and appealing. You might love a pared-back, minimalist style or prefer a casual country farmhouse vibe. You might be keen to opt for a streamlined Scandi fit-out or create a bohemian, French, or coastal feel, among others.
If you haven’t decorated a place before and don’t know what you like, peruse design magazines, interior blogs, social media posts, home renovation shows, and other content for ideas. This will help you understand what you do and don’t like and inspire you on how to start designing your home.
Take Your Time with Purchases
Don’t feel you have to spend money on buying everything you might need right from the start, though. Not only is this expensive and tough for the budget, but it can mean you don’t have enough chance to live in the place for a while and understand what will work best for it.
Start slowly with furnishings and other items, and don’t rush the process. You’ll want some main items first, such as a bed, sofa, dining room table, chairs, bed linen, towels, and kitchenware. Over time, though, you can build on this list, especially if you spot one or two key pieces you fall in love with and want to use as the basis for your design.
For instance, you might discover an awesome artwork or large area rug to pick colors from to help you decorate. Accumulate possessions over time as you get a good feel for what you like and what will and won’t work in the various spaces of your property.
Spend Money on Some Areas and Save Money on Others
You’ll likely have a fairly tight budget when setting up your first apartment. This means it’s wise to save money wherever possible. However, try to allocate more funds for some things than others. Certain items are worth spending more money on, while you can cut costs on other things because it doesn’t make much difference if you splurge or not.
For example, you can purchase a quality low-profile ceiling fan or another type of fan for each room without having to spend a huge amount, and the same goes for light fixtures, crockery, cushions, and artwork. However, it’s best to invest more in a good mattress that you love to rest on since sleep is so important. You may sit for hours on a sofa, so put more money into this, too. On the other hand, you can likely make do with an affordable dining room table, bedside and coffee table, and dining room chairs or kitchen stools for a while.
Think about which goods you’ll use most and which are most important to you and spend more money on these. For everything else, decorate on a budget until you have more spare cash to upgrade.
Other ways to decorate your first apartment are to take advantage of family and friend hand-me-downs and design or hardware store birthday or Christmas gift vouchers, as well as cheap second-hand items you can pick up from garage sales and thrift stores.
You might like to add some greenery with potted plans to make your place feel more homely, too, and update window treatments to give you enough privacy and darken your bedroom for better quality sleep.
Follow these steps and understand you may not get everything exactly how you want it right away, but you can keep adding to and fixing up your home over time to make it feel more like your own.