Oh, the first apartment: the stomping grounds to adulthood where you learn what adulting truly means. Your first apartment is where you experiment with everything you love and house them in your space. Furnishing an apartment and personalizing it with your style while ensuring it’s cohesive is challenging. However, we have the best tips for furnishing your first apartment to help you easily decorate your space.
Measure Everything Before Purchasing
When you arrive at your empty apartment, it may be hard to imagine your furniture—planning out your apartment and creating a visual board of what you want it to look like will help you choose your furniture. However, you must measure your space accurately before you purchase anything, even wall art. If available, look at the floor plan and begin to plan out your room(s).
This step is essential to ensure that the furniture you pick will be the correct size and you’re not stuck with a sofa that’s too big or awkwardly small.
Don’t Forget About Storage
Your first apartment is probably on the low-end of square footage. It’s important to have a functional storage system or multi-purpose furniture. Including cute baskets, ottomans, and benches in your interior design will save you a lot of space and allow you to store extra items, like magazines, towels, notebooks, and extra blankets.
Invest in the Right Pieces
When you get your first apartment, we can best advise you to invest in the right pieces. It would help if you aimed for furniture that you can see yourself with for over five years. When purchasing furniture, think about your lifestyle. Are you an avid cleaner, or would you prefer something easy to clean and durable? Don’t overspend on trendy pieces that will be “out of style” in the next three years. Try to find affordable but good quality furniture pieces, or reupholster vintage furniture to make it your own. If you’re a beginner at reupholstering materials, you should start with more simple tasks, like dining room chairs or an ottoman.
Buy Accessories Last
While you’re looking for your coffee table and sofa, you may find cute trinkets and trays, but don’t buy them until your entire living room, bedroom, or office space has come together. The best tip for furnishing your first apartment is to buy your accessories last. If not, you will try to decorate the entire room based on a golden bowl or a pink vase when your original color scheme was blue and silver.