How to overhaul your apartment from top to bottom
If you walk into your flat and immediately feel as if your rooms are cluttered and haphazard, but not in a trendy way, you may be itching to give it an overhaul. Or, perhaps you have recently moved into a new abode and want to re-design every room from scratch. Interior design can help to create a place that feels as if it uniquely belongs to you, not to mention bringing out your best creative side, but how do you tackle this project?
Start with the biggest rooms first
What rooms will you be spending the most time in? It’s likely that it will be your living room or bedroom; however, if your heart of the home is your kitchen, then this applies too. Whatever your favourite rooms, put the most thought into these. Putting time and effort into your most popular living spaces will leave you feeling much more contented when you achieve the final result. Using mirrors and bold features in your best rooms are just two ways of making your interior design choices pop.
Change the lighting fixtures
If you have the option to, changing the light fixtures in your new home can make a huge difference to the overall aesthetic of each room. Find an elegant or stand-out floor lamp which can sit in any place like an ornament in its own right. On top of that, switching out cheap, neutral light fixtures for low-hanging fixtures can almost create a centre-piece for a room, particularly in places such as the living or dining room. Matching your fixtures to your design theme can immediately pull a room together.
Don’t ignore your windows
Just one walk around an old city in continental Europe will showcase why window decoration can add a personal touch to an apartment. Pots of flowers, hanging ornaments and bold curtains can give your abode an incredibly intimate and kitsch feel, worthy of a European film set. Even the blinds you choose can completely alter the look and feel of each window. For example, pairing bamboo blinds with some exotic potted plants will create a small tropical portal at the end of your room.
Fill it with artwork
If there’s anything that will make your apartment uniquely yours, then it’s the artwork. You don’t have to be a regular visitor of the Louvre to know how to place artwork in your apartment. After all, what makes for good artwork is entirely subjective. Here are a few things to consider:
- Do you prefer high or low culture? Or, to put it plainly, would you be happy with a photograph of a flower or an artist’s interpretation of a flower? You don’t necessarily have to be interested in high culture to fill your apartment with beautiful paintings and prints. Even if you visit an interior décor store for your artwork, it’s up to you to decide how well it can be incorporated into your theme.
- What are your real passions? To create an apartment that feels like it truly belongs to you, you will want to have artwork that genuinely appeals to you. If you love comics, then it could be worth your time to source poster-sized images of comic artwork. If your family is at the centre of your world, then incorporating your family photos into photo-frame collages could create a unique visual piece that is entirely personal to you.
Turf out old furniture
Just like old clothing, sometimes old furniture can bring us down and cramp our style. If you have a tired beige sofa that survived your student days but is a bit too well-loved, then you may wish to hand it into a charity shop. Then, it’s up to you to decide what style you want to replace your old furniture with, and how you will incorporate it with any themes you’ve created. Replacing your old sofa with a brand new one with a contemporary design, for example, will completely change the focal point of your living room. Browsing through Luluna’s sofas should help you generate plenty of style ideas for furniture to replace your old items and give your style a spruce up.
Don’t be intimidated by the idea of overhauling your current abode! Enjoying it will mean that you get far more involved and excited about how you decide to create each room. Be fussy about your furniture and get adventurous with colour – within reason, of course. Create a place that you love to spend time in and all the labour and curation will be worth it.
