5 Ways to Love Your Small Apartment Decorating BEFORE It's Finished
Your small apartment decorating may not be finished quite yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fall in love with your apartment aesthetic in the meantime!
In this video, I’m giving you 5 cheap and simple interior styling tips that will get your apartment to start feeling like your own cozy home - without blowing your budget all at once.
So if you’ve been stuck in a rut with your decorating process and want a few quick and easy ways to make your apartment feel pretty and inviting - despite being unfinished - you’re in the right place!
Video Transcript ↓
My boyfriend and I have been in this new apartment for five months, and to be frank, I am not totally in love with our decorating situation yet…
We all love a good before and after when it comes to interior decorating (thank you, HGTV) but what about that awkward middle phase? That phase where you're just sort of slowly buying things because we all have budgets and we can't just splurge on all of our decor all at once.
So let's talk about how to love the space you're living in, even though it isn't quite finished yet!
This topic, by the way, was inspired by one of my Instagram followers, @kimberly_theplanner, who responded to one of my Instagram stories asking:
“How did you deal with the in-between feelings of slowly buying things and the pretty you achieved? The in-between for me is anxiety. I never feel like I like my apartment styling.”
And I thought, well, that's perfect because that's exactly where I'm at with styling this apartment we're in!
I have 5 things that I've personally been working on as a way to cope with the messy middle phase of the interior styling process for our apartment.
And I have to admit that I haven't been perfect in implementing these five things I'm about to talk about… but they are what I recommend to myself and to you for this messy middle phase of the interior styling process!
And before we dive in, I wanted to let you know that you can now watch my free workshop, "Decorate Your Dream Apartment Without Spending Money on the Wrong Decor For You" whenever you want!
In this FREE, 1-hour workshop, I’ll teach you how to…
Discover your personal style so you can decorate a space that feels like YOU
Create mood boards to help you visualize what your apartment could look like before buying things
Shop for decor in a way that will save you money and allow you to buy things that actually fit your space and your personality
If all that sounds like exactly what you need to create the dreamy apartment you’ve been yearning for, click here to watch the workshop!
So let's get into it! Here's what to do to fall in love with your apartment, even if it isn't quite finished yet.
1. Make Small Moves
My first tip for this is to make small moves. Take your decorating piece by piece, and really appreciate those little decisions that you make, one by one.
A beautifully styled space is the culmination of tiny decorating decisions that all come together. A single note played on a piano might not sound like much, but that note, when combined with dozens of other notes, creates a beautiful song.
Your styling is no different! A room is like a symphony that is composed of many interior styling decisions.
Examples of small decorating moves:
Buying flowers at the grocery store
Adding a simple decor accent to a shelf
Getting a lamp for prettier lighting
Tidying + organizing your space
Rearranging your current furniture layout
Lighting a scented candle for ambiance
Adding a new throw pillow to your bed
Gathering ideas on Pinterest/Instagram
2. Make BIG Moves
My next tip might seem in direct opposition to the last tip, but both can coexist together. And so this next tip is to make BIG moves.
So yes, a beautiful space is composed of multiple tiny little decisions that come together. But also when you make a big move, when you make a big styling choice, that can do a lot of the heavy lifting aesthetically in a room. And that big choice can make it so you don't really have to do much more for a space to look beautiful.
A perfect example of making a big decorating move is this peel and stick wallpaper we recently put up in our bedroom:
This wallpaper makes such a huge impact on our bedroom that not much more has to happen stylistically for the whole room to come together and look beautiful. The wallpaper is doing the heavy lifting!
And when you make one of those big bold choices, the other things in the space fall into place so much more easily, because you have a very clear inspiration and focal point. It really just makes the rest of your styling much easier.
Same thing with this black accent wall we recently painted in our living room:
Painting this wall black completely elevated our existing decor. Everything looks better because of that black accent wall!
So this just goes to show that when you make these big bold choices, all of the surrounding decor simply gets elevated.
So look around your apartment and think about the big, bold choices that you could make in your space!
This means something different for everyone. I'm not saying you have to paint a big black accent wall, or you have to go through the grueling task of putting up wallpaper in your apartment, but just simply think about what a bold choice could mean for you and your specific space.
3. Keep it Clean
My next tip for loving your apartment even if it isn't finished yet is pretty damn simple, and that is to just keep your apartment clean.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: clutter is the enemy of style.
So even if you don't have that much styling in your space yet, if you have clutter, it will overshadow whatever styling moments you do have. Clutter will just always upstage interior styling. I hate to say it! I hate to give it that much credit, but clutter is undeniably powerful.
A decluttered space simply feels good and looks good.
So even if you haven't been able to buy the things you want to buy for your apartment yet, at the very least, you can look around and see a clean, decluttered space.
And when you have a clean, decluttered space, you can just call it minimalism for now! Just have that be your interior style until you're able to buy the things that you wanna buy. 😉
4. Make Plans (And Get Excited About Them!)
I might not be satisfied with the current state of our decor in most of our apartment, but I have plans in my head that make me excited and make me feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
I mean, the months that I spent looking forward to how our bedroom wall would look once we put up the wallpaper got me through some hard times!
Having something to look forward to makes a difference. I have a list of things I want us to buy for the apartment eventually, and seeing everything in this list makes me feel like I have a path forward. It does wonders for the mindset.
So try making a list of your own! Just list out the things that you eventually want to buy, and you'll find that it gives you a feeling of having a path to follow.
Once you have this list, start shopping and save the links to everything you find. Start collecting links to these items and start picturing how certain things could look together.
This will help you make more informed purchasing choices so you're not wasting money on decor that ends up not really looking good together.
And this shopping process can start the formation of your overall vision for your space!
This is also where making a mood board of things you're thinking about buying really comes in handy, and I show you my mood board creation process in my free workshop, Decorate Your Dream Apartment Without Spending Money on the Wrong Decor For You. It's my FREE, one-hour workshop that walks you through my interior styling process. So if you want to see my mood board creation process, definitely watch that workshop!
But basically, shopping for decor and visualizing how the things you're finding could look in your space and how they could look together will make you feel more excited and inspired. And it's something to give you a little boost when you look around your apartment and you feel unsatisfied with its current decor state.
5. Set the Mood
And my final tip for loving your space even though it is not finished yet is to set the mood. Because setting the mood in a space is relatively inexpensive and it's pretty quick and easy to do! It doesn't require big furniture purchases or massive wallpaper displays. No, setting the mood in a space can happen pretty easily.
Setting the mood in a room can simply come down to lighting. As soon as you're able to, simply buy a lamp or two so that the lighting in your apartment is soothing and aesthetically pleasing. Usually the overhead lighting that comes with a space is the opposite of soothing and aesthetically pleasing, so leveling up your lighting will make a huge impact on the overall look of your space.
Honestly, if you can only afford to do one thing in your apartment right now, invest in lighting!
You can also buy a few candles to set the mood. Here are a couple videos of mine with my home fragrance recommendations:
Of course, you can also set the mood by simply buying little decor accents that enhance the overall mood of your space. These can be just like little throw pillows or blankets; things that make your space feel cozy. These are just the little inexpensive ways that you can enhance the mood of an apartment and make it feel like more of a home!
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So those were my five tips on how to love your space, even if it isn't finished yet!
These are the ways that I'm personally coping with the fact that our apartment really hasn't fully come together yet. So I hope you find them helpful next time you feel like you're in a decor rut!
Just because our apartments aren't fully decorated yet doesn't mean we can't love them on some level.
Remember, every stylish space has to look before it can be pretty, but there are remedies for dealing with that anxiety and dissatisfaction in living in a space that doesn't feel fully decorated yet. So I hope my personal remedies for this help you!
For daily glimpses into my studio apartment life, you can follow me on Instagram @moda.misfit.
And for regular doses of apartment styling tips and small space decor inspiration, subscribe to my YouTube channel and hit the bell to be notified when a new video goes up every week.