How is your apartment decorated?

Status
Not open for further replies.
P

phil9922

Banned
Jun 5, 2007
378
4
0
I moved into a new apartment about a month ago, and I'm having a really tough time making it look nice inside (21yr old guy). When I got my first apartment 2 years ago I bought all my furniture at ikea and I've kinda grown out of that stuff already, it looks college dorm-ish to me now. I have some newer, nicer stuff that I've bought since then but it seems no matter what I do with it everything looks stupid. It is a huge apartment, which may have been mistake #1. This place is 1700sq ft and its furnished with exactly the same stuff I had at my previous 710sq ft apartment.

Since it's an apartment I can't paint any walls, but I did get permission from my landlord to wall mount my flatscreens. I haven't decided whether or not to do that yet.

I work from home so I am here like 20 hours out of the day, and its really starting to bug me that I pretty much hate my surroundings. I don't have the 'comforting, homey' feeling that I still feel when I go back to my parents house, even though I moved out 4 years ago.

Anyone been through the same thing and have some tips? I haven't found much searching google.

edit: meant to post this in shooting the shit
 


find a "centerpiece" you love and center your design around it. For example over the years I've been collecting these massive canvases of european cafe street scenes. They're lovely. Anyway I build the room around it with the furniture and the colors. I find decorative items that pull out aspects of the painting. All my wall colors blend with the paintings. You can also do this with a "theme" instead of a centerpiece and apply the same principles.
 
Here's an example of one of my centerpieces (happens to be the kitchen)

EDIT: holy crap that came out big...sorry bout that.

zxwvs006exq9wo75d8rp.jpg
 
If you want a place that's done on the cheaper side of things, Op Shops are a great place for furniture.
They often come from deceased estates, so it's pretty possible to kit your entire house out with furniture from the same era if you shop around.
I'm talking a 3 seater couch, 2-3 comfy chairs, a bed, a 6 piece dining room set and a few shelves and cabinets for less than $500. The only thing you'll have trouble finding is a good computer desk.


My first apartment was very industrial. Literally. I'd scabbed a whole bunch of steel and aluminium parts from local construction sites, and then just drilled, nailed, welded and glued all my furniture and shelving together.

If something needed to be soft, like a couch, I put a black pillow on it.

For a metal head like myself, this worked out fantastically.

Then I got a girlfriend, and now we live in a place that's "tasteful" :'(
 
we had nothing! I shared an apartment with two cousin who are in college...we don't even have a TV..(but we have a ping pong table in the living room for some reason)
 
I love Ikea man- simple, economical, and you don't give a shit if it breaks.

And why can't you paint? Most places won't care if you paint so long as you paint it back to how it was when you came in.

Okay, assuming you can't paint, here's something that I've always wanted to do but simply haven't gotten around to: wall spacers. Basically, make a wooden frame to whatever length/width that you want (so long as it fits on your wall). I've seen it done with 2ft x 6ft dimensions. The frame should be a basic frame with .5" thick wood, and support it so that it doesn't flex. Then, take a relatively thick black fabric and run it across the frame and staple/secure it so it looks like you're not holding a big black rectangle.

Secure it to the wall and BAM, you've added some depth, changed things up a bit, and didn't paint a darn thing ;).

A great example of what I'm talking about is sound deadeners from sound studios, only instead of MDF and heavy material, you're using stuff a bit lighter as it's just for aesthetics.
 
technically I guess I can paint...but I just moved here a month ago and already regret not buying a house. As soon as my lease is up I'll be out of here, so I dont want to get into painting and repainting. The wall spacer is a cool idea though. The only problem with that is I have a lot of really long walls. Someone should start producing like a temporary stick on wallpaper for apartments.
 
phil9922 said:
technically I guess I can paint...but I just moved here a month ago and already regret not buying a house. As soon as my lease is up I'll be out of here, so I dont want to get into painting and repainting. The wall spacer is a cool idea though. The only problem with that is I have a lot of really long walls. Someone should start producing like a temporary stick on wallpaper for apartments.
Click to expand...

LOL yea, I've got a few of those. I'd like to get like four or five, maye put posters/art on them as a showcase or something. My girlfriend won't let me... GRRRR
 
Thanks for the input so far. My problem is there aren't many places around me where I can go look for artwork and things like that, and the places I've been I've never seen something I fell in love with. I have a really nice bedroom set and office setup, but my living room and dining room are so bare and boring looking that it bothers me to sit in them for any length of time. I don't want to spend $5000 on artwork and decorations, but I'm not really trying to do it on a budget either. Like I said, I spend so much time here, that I want to really be happy with my surroundings and I don't mind paying as long as I can make myself more comfortable.
 
HarveyJ said:
Well, there is that reusable glue stuff that 3M makes, and GlueTac from Bostik.
Why not try some of that with real wall paper?
Click to expand...

Im curious to how that'd hold, or if it'd look wrinkly or anything. It'd be cool if it worked and then I could just get solid color wallpapers to make the wall look like it was painted, then just rip it off when i move out.
 
See if any local colleges are having an art fair - Cheap but good art can be found there.
 
I'm in the same situation, design-wise. I sure as shit don't have 1700 sqft to furnish, but I'm bordering on colorblind and have no eye for interior design. Every apartment I've ever had, I've just felt like I was squatting. I have nice furniture, but I just hate the way the place looks. I'm actually in the process of changing some things now, but it doesn't help that my prick landlord won't let me paint PERIOD.
 
To be honest, aside from a 1 or 2 sorta nice pieces, I'm still using what would be considered college kid furniture - Ikea, Walmart, Mattress Warehouse, and re-painted/re-finished yardsale crap. It's mostly understated and plain so nothing is an eyesore, but none of it draws attention or inspires either. The apartment itself is pretty high-end, and our other decor is well-coordinated, so that makes up for a lot. (For the record, I'm in my late 20s, am married, and we could easily afford better furniture at this point)

I think a lot of it had to do with knowing we were transient. Why invest thousands of dollars when we know we will probably be moving within 2-4 years and might have to redo everything?

To be fair though, we both have been in corporate jobs that demanded either lots of travel or long hours, so we weren't at home much either. I can certainly understand the impulse to upgrade if you're cooped up all day.

However, I'm sort of in the same boat in that my wife and I are closing on our first house next week, and the furniture in our 700sf apartment a) sucks and b) won't come close to furnishing a 2300sf house.

My first impulse would be Design Within Reach (posted above) or similarly styled local boutique lines. I think their modern and minimalist aesthetic is most appropriate for high-end apartment living, especially if you're in a city and in new-ish more loft-like construction. I'm particularly drawn to the following modernist lines: Le Corbusier (yes it's ubiquitous, I still like it), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Charles Eames, Isamu Noguchi, and Philippe Starck (all mostly sold as repros now). I don't think I could pull a lot of it off (especially in a 90-yo brick colonial, lol) but it definitely makes me drool.

I've found friends or acquaintances who went to design school (a good one, not a diploma mill) or work in industrial/product design are a good resource for learning about and talking through those sorts of things. Same for some architecture kids, but they're more of a mixed bag. So you might want to chat up some folks like that too if you know any.

Anyway, good luck with it. I'd suggest just chilling at a big Barnes&Noble and looking through both some design mags as well as some books too. It could be a really fun project.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom