Posted on September 4, 2007
Take a deep breath, let the fact that you have finally stepped out from under the umbrella of your parents’ support sink in. Now you’re out on your own and enjoying the spacious comfort of your lavishly furnished apartment. Yeah, who are we kidding?
Moving into a new apartment is exhilarating, but it doesn’t have to look like a snapshot from Martha Stewart’s magazine. We are not interior designers, and don’t have the time and resources to scout out items from Better Homes and Gardens for our apartments. College students are allowed to confess that they’re cheap (actually it’s kind of a universal rule), and don’t want to pour all the savings from their grueling summer jobs into furnishing an apartment. Putting a personal, potpourri touch throughout your apartment allows you to express your personality.
Before you start to decorate, make sure you and your roomies establish a firm budget, so you don’t go too overboard with the decorations, and you can spare the stress on your wallet.
A general theme is good to carry throughout your apartment, but try not to stick to it too strictly. Keeping each room one or two colors can get boring. Eclectic decorating is essential.
If your apartment is unfurnished, look for furniture in the classified ads, or venture to a thrift shop if you’re OK with having furniture that’s been comfortably loved. Craigslist.com boasts cheap or even free furniture. Harrisonburg was recently added to Craigslist as a region for trading and selling items. Sometimes people have to get rid of their furniture in a hurry and give away barely used or even brand new furniture.
Generally, the apartments around JMU are furnished with a couch or two, a dining room table and set of chairs, basic kitchen appliances, a bed, desk and dresser. Most (if not all) landlords frown upon removing furniture from the apartment. So it’s easy to work with what you have.
First, take a fieldtrip to the fabric store with your roomies. Choose a fabric color, pattern or texture to cover your furniture. Don’t stop at a hardware store for a staple gun though; instead, simply tuck the fabric into the cushions of a couch, or drape the fabric over a chair. You can also use fabric as a tablecloth, although plastic tablecloths are easier to keep clean.
When rearranging your living room, pick a piece of furniture as your focal point, and work from there. Also, the color of your furniture, whether as-is or covered by you, is a great place to start when considering the scheme of the rest of a room.
Check with your landlord or renting office to see if you need approval before you consider painting any part of your apartment. Sometimes in the confined spaces of an apartment living room, painting every wall in a room could be color overload. Paint one wall and leave the rest white, or if you’re a colorful person, you could even try painting each wall a different, but not drastic, color. Soft or light colors can open the space of a cramped apartment, so steer away from darker shades
Painting an entire wall one solid color is too conventional. Instead, create patterns or designs like a checkerboard, polka dots, waves or even a mural.
If you don’t like the commitment to paint, you can even cover your walls with fabric. Fabric is easy to apply and remove, and it won’t leave any evidence behind when you change your mind or move out.
It’s time to think about how to decorate those freshly painted walls. Quote boards are absolutely necessary because it will help fuse a bond between you and your roomies, and it’s a creative way to collectively share personal memories. You can make a quote board by buying a large dry-erase board or sheet of colored paper. You could even go so far as to write directly on a wall using non-permanent markers, but be sure to inform your landlord before you scribble.
You could also designate a wall of your living room as a picture wall. Plaster photos of you and your roommates, mutual friends, vacations, breaks and other adventures. Frames are often too fancy, so you could make a collage by pasting those 3x5s directly on the wall.
Depending on how classy or classic you want to be, decorating with framed pictures and posters is an artful idea. If your apartment is on the smallish side, hang a few tiled mirrors to create the illusion of a larger living space.
When you step into your kitchen, you’re usually on a mission. This room is the most functional in your apartment, so don’t be too concerned with spicing this room up. The extent of your decorations could be matching kitchen utensils and hand towels, but other kitchen accessories like plates and cups don’t have to match.
Your bedroom is your own personal haven for sleeping and studying, so make it as personable as possible.
You can certainly decorate your room in your favorite color, but add complimentary colors to your room as well, or pick your top three favorite colors. Someone once said, “Loving a color and living with it are two different things.” A good idea is to pick a color or pattern for your bed linens, and decorate your room from there.
You can carry a color scheme or theme into your bathroom, but if you’re sharing the bathroom with another roommate, agree on what you both want to do.
Make your study space as inviting as possible so you won’t dread escaping there from time to time. You can even purchase a more enjoyable studying chair, and use that extra desk chair at the dining room table.
In a smaller bedroom, it’s often hard to find surface space for all those awesome accessories you have. Install shelves for extra space, but be sure to consult your landlord before doing anything too drastic. Storage units that can slip under your bed can stow away seasonal clothes or extra things you don’t need to put your hands on very often. Stick-on hooks are also great for hanging things like bags, belts and jewelry to relieve your floor from unnecessary clutter. Hopefully, keeping clutter to a minimum will help you keep your room pleasantly organized.
The most important thing to keep in mind when decorating your new apartment is that it doesn’t have to be instantly furbished. Your apartment could turn into a well-loved masterpiece with the help of your roommates a little at a time.
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