Decorating For Small Spaces

There are few things in life more difficult that attempting to decorate a really small living space. Most people spend months simply trying to fit all their belongings into their apartment - nevermind trying to make it all look nice in the end. Don't give up. There are ways to decorate your own little "hole in the wall" living space. As with most things it's best to start at the beginning with the smallest space and work our way up from there. Here are some decorating ideas for small spaces.

Decorating For Space

Let's start with a studio apartment. Normally this is just one room and a bathroom and can be very difficult to decorate effectively. A common mistake that people make is to try to make the entire apartment match. Instead you're far better off splitting the apartment into separate sections. You could use wooden screens with fabric lining to do this. Try yard sales and flea markets first for these screens as they can be quite pricey brand new. You could always consider going down the DIY route for these?

Another great option is using fabric to separate the space. You can get rods to hold up the fabric or alternatively you could use a clothesline and clothes pins to hold the fabric. Check out fabric stores for any off-season sales they might be having. Or you could buy fabric scraps and go for a quilt approach to your separating fabric walls. One tip - when choosing your fabrics make sure you can decorate "around them". Don't make them so zany that they are impossible to decorate around.

Once you've separated your studio apartment into living, sleeping and eating spaces you can then go about decorating your walls to match your new fabric partition.

A larger apartment may have several rooms but this still presents you with various decorating challenges. Generally, the living room, dining room, and kitchen overlap each other so the decorating schemes here will need to match to some extent. Your best bet is to find a couple of colors to focus on and build around that. For example a dining room could have a red tablecover with red vases on it. This could then lead to a living room with lighter shades of red mixed with wooden furniture. This allows you a graduation from strong reds to lighter shades in other rooms.

Decorating a small space is a challenge even for the experienced home decorator. Make the most of your space too! For example make sure that any table or dresses also doubled as storage space. Even when you move to a bigger apartment or house later these tables will still come in handy. The key to decorating lies inside you - be creative with your small space and don't discount any decorating options.

Copyright 2007 DecorSecrets.com