Weekly Tip for June 12: 3 Home Decorating Principles for Small Urban Chic Apartments

But the art of revamping, styling and remodeling small apartments has reached its maximum potential, being able to turn any urban hollow into a cozy, stylish nook.

The main idea fueling small apartment designs is minimalism, keeping everything on a low key and as de-cluttered as possible. After all, the goal is to make the apartment look larger than it is and give people a good breezy feeling and the comfort they all need. If you want to find out more about designing a livable urban chic apartment to feel home in, let’s take a look at the next ideas.

1. Open and Floating Shelving

First things first, pick your favorite living room design idea and stick to it. Space is the last thing on your mind right now, as you need to decide on a color scheme and some furniture pieces to make the space comfortable and functional, without suffocating you.

Once you established the must-have furniture pieces (an extensible couch to meet multiple needs, a pair of armchairs or a coffee table), you need to find a way to have storage space and let light and air fill the living room and make it look less cramped. One of the best choices is open bookcases and/or open and floating shelves.

• If you are bold enough, try glass shelves incorporated in neutral furniture or solid floating glass shelves.
• Make sure you pick the shelves and the open cabinets or bookcases in light and neutral colors if you already have colored walls, rugs or flooring, window treatments and tapestry, or choose bold and contrasting colors if the overall color scheme is pale, white or neutral.
• A small studio also allows you to get even more creative: incorporate a wardrobe and a bookcase in the same piece or build yourself an open bookcase to hold personal items and separate a room in two different spaces (a living room area and a home working space for instance), while letting the light go through.

2. Playing With Light and Color

When we think about small apartments, we think about minimalism, usually translated into neat, crisp straight lines, perfect geometry and low sized objects. But minimalism doesn’t exclude the use of bold colors, innovative lighting ideas or even a piece of classic or vintage furniture if you so desire. When it comes to painting a room and giving it light, you need to consider the following:

• Your room color clearly affects your mood and transmits an overall feeling you should be sure you want to experience for a few years in a row.
• When it comes to urban chic designs, you can either pick the all glorious white as a canvas you can further paint on with color, texture, depth and contrast, or neutral shades of ivory, cream, eggshell and gray, among others.
• There are a few classic color schemes that make an urban chic apartment look like a million bucks: the old shabby chic style turned new with Pantone’s colors of the year (a perfect mix of sweet pink and blue), all blended with white furniture and geometrical light fixtures, the timeless black and white combo, the bold orange wall for accent and a creamy dream around, earth colors combinations or the ultimate staple of minimalism in glass and steel.
• Make the best use of your corners to add proper lighting that is both functional and beautiful, making sure your lamps offer you comfort, intimacy and make the space look bigger and brighter.

3. Wood Can Be Urban Chic as Well

When we think about wood as a decorative element or furniture material, we think about a rustic design more than an urban one. But wood can turn a small apartment into an urban oasis if used properly:

• Pick lighter shades of natural wood and solid wood pieces for small kitchens and keep in mind that the open floating shelving is a rule you can follow in the kitchen as well.
• Wooden panels, furniture, and fixtures go great in any type of room: mix wood with metal, glass and ceramics for bathrooms or living rooms, and mix different shades of wood with breezy colors and well-chosen light fixtures.
• Wooden shades and wood colors make incredible backgrounds to build a stylish urban chic room – don’t forget to add natural elements such as flower pots, flower vases, and earthly colors.
• Wood elements are timeless classics and go well with anything you might want to change or redecorate, so next time you pick new wall colors, wallpapers, tapestry, rugs or lighting, you can save your budget by incorporating the already existent wooden décor into the new design.

When you decorate small apartments, besides these three main principles, you should also remember other tips and tricks for achieving spectacular designs:

• Use mirrors to create the illusion of space and have light bounce infinitely in your living room or bedroom.
• Use all your possible storage space, even the unlikely ones: room corners, staircases, and the small portion of the wall below the windows, the balcony or the top of your walls high towards the ceiling.
• Use multifunctional furniture which allows you to store personal stuff, books, accessories and useful items (a couch box, an armchair’s side handles, and angular room corner shelving and so on).
• Don’t skip the DIY projects: a vintage wooden ladder can turn into a temporary clothes holder while some good old fashioned baskets can become temporary storage places for everyday items.

What are your ideas on decorating small urban chic apartments? Do you have some principles of your own?

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