Small apartments can be hard to decorate. They have very little floorspace, storage, and in a lot of cases, lighting. How can you make your apartment look stylish instead of a cluttered mess? Read these decorating tips.

Choose the Right Furniture

When you have a small apartment, you have to be selective with your furniture. You don’t want to pick big and bulky pieces. For one, it might be near impossible to move these pieces into your building. You could find yourself desperately trying to cram a couch through a narrow doorway, realizing halfway through that there’s no way it’s making it past the frame in one piece.

Second of all, bulky pieces will take up way too much floorspace and clutter up your apartment. You have such a little amount of floorspace to work with, so you have to be strategic with your furniture choices.

You’ll want to get pieces that are lightweight, convertible and multi-functional. Take the Transformer Table— this is a customizable dining set that’s perfect for small apartment living. The expandable panels can help you increase the seats to accommodate guests when they come over for dinner. And once those guests leave, you can shrink your table set downto a more convenient size, leaving you plenty of floorspace.

What are other items to look into?

• A modular sectional sofa.
• An ottoman with a hollowed-out centre to store remotes, video game controllers or spare blankets.
• A coffee table with lower shelves to store books or board games.
• Fold-out or stackable chairs.

Use Vertical Space

When you have minimal floorspace to work with, look to your walls. Your apartment’s walls will give you ample opportunity to add essential storage and exciting décor.

Start by putting up floating shelves and bookcases against your walls. Add your books, board games, picture frames, potted plants, records and knick-knacks on top of these. Your rooms will be filled with eye-catching home décor without causing any frustrating clutter.

If you’re in a rental and you’re worried that putting up shelving will make you lose your deposit, you can always patch up wall holes before you end your lease. That way, the walls will look perfectly smooth, and your landlord will be perfectly happy.

Add More Light

Unless you are blessed with an apartment with huge windows overlooking a gorgeous view, you’re likely going to be living in a space without much natural light. And if you’re living in an older apartment, you’ll likely have very little built-in electrical lighting, too.

Lighting has a huge impact on how your home looks. Dim lighting will make your space seem even smaller than it is. Bright lighting will make it seem much bigger. So, to create the illusion of more square footage, you should boost the lighting in your apartment.

How can you boost the lighting?

• Add floor lamps and desk lamps in every room.
• Choose pale lampshade colours like beige, white, pastel pink or yellow. These will diffuse light much better than darker lampshade colours.
• Add LED light strips to your cabinets, desks, drawers and more.
• Don’t put furniture in the way of your windows. You don’t want to obstruct the natural light.
• Put mirrors on the walls. These will reflect light around the room.

Square footage is an obstacle that you can work around. When you follow these simple decorating tips, you can give your small apartment an amazing makeover.