What are some good tips for studio living?

Posted by divya on September 27th, 2019

Have you recently moved into a studio apartment or are planning to do so? You must be worried about adjusting yourself and all your stuff in a tiny, cosy area. From interiors to decorating your new home, there comes a lot of questions. How would you have a living room, bedroom, and a kitchen while having some extra space left for you? 

Designing a studio apartment requires planning, editing, and efforts. Below mentioned are some tips from the people who had the chance to experience studio living and come up with different ideas to make the most of every centimetre available. You can draw inspiration from these solutions and apply them to your new home interior.

1. Use Natural Light

Do you know, natural light has a direct effect on mood? Let the light come into your room directly for a few hours or so. Opening the drapes makes your room looks bigger, cleaner, and more refreshing. You can also invest in some light fixtures that enable you to have a sound sleep at night. 

2. Organize your Furniture

If you see a well-designed room, you will feel that the objects are placed exactly where they belong. Interior designers use smart furniture placement and organize everything into small units in a room. Even if you have a small place, you can use this trick to get a finished look. Evaluate all your furniture carefully to decide what all can be used together. For example, if you are setting up a small dining place with a table and two chairs, then use your photographs on that wall to make it feel like home. You can apply the same in all the areas in your shared living space.

3. Try Flexible Furnishings
With technology bringing change in your life, everything is getting smarter and more flexible, including furniture. If you are living in one of the studio apartments which you are sharing with someone, then your room becomes your whole place. You try to keep everything in one place while still feeling it like your bedroom. In such scenarios, invest in furnishings that can help you achieve more than one goal. You can have a sofa and bed that serves both the purpose without acquiring any extra space.

Similarly, there are seating cubes or footstools available that also provide storage option. You can also buy a drop leaf table that can be fully opened to facilitate up to 6 people while reducing it to 2 and becomes a small centre table for the living room as well. Flexible furnishing is a boon for people staying in a co-living area or rental studios.

4. Keep Your Belongings Minimal

Instead of keeping your old clothes and items that you haven’t used in a year, get rid of them instantly. Replace your traditional storage with the modular closet. It will help you stay organized, arrange your things, and manage your storage space efficiently. You can also consider investing in a closet hanger. There would be hundreds of things that you have kept thinking that you will use it someday, well, that day is today. Donate them to those in need. It will be the best use of it!

5. Walls are storage too

In your new co-living home, you see walls everywhere, so why not use them? If your closet gave up accommodating your items, let it take a rest and assign the remaining task to your walls. Confused? The solution is an open closet. Supported by walls, open storage is a smart way to keep things that add flavour to your home. It may be some stuffed toys from your childhood, photographs of your parents, or your favourite books. All of these can be stored efficiently.

6. Invest in Artwork

Add artworks in your walls. Wall art has an impressive effect in a small place. It draws people’s attention from unattractive things, hides wall flaws, and show your sense of style to everyone visiting you. You can put wall art as per your preferences and requirements with adhesive products. There would be no need to use a hammer and nails. If you don’t have space for big frames, then get some small sculptures and wall hangings and put them together. It can change the entire look of your room in just a few minutes.

7.  Make a Bedroom

Keep your bed separate from the rest of your living area still keep in a place where everyone is able to see. Do not overlook the importance of having a bed in the most visible place in your room. It makes your home looks like a studio apartment. If you are not comfortable sleeping in such an open area, use some room dividers like folding screens, curtains, or bookshelf that can be used for this purpose. 

8. Go vertical

Once you have removed everything that you don’t need, there’s still a lot of stuff left such as your personal belongings that you don’t want to showcase. Like we mentioned earlier, use your walls. There are a lot of ways to keep your things in vertical storage. Bring pegboards and shelves to keep the things that are not required at your eye level. Take your cabinet and bins all the way up to the ceiling. Whenever you need anything from that area, use a stool or chair. 

You can also take your furniture vertical. It will create more storage for your seasonal things such as off-season clothes, extra towels, toys, and other not-so-important stuff. You can raise your bed level a bit and use its underneath storage to keep all that extra stuff. 
At last, one thing to remember when living in a studio apartment is: Bigger is not always better.

Shifting in a small, cosy place with all your stuff may feel a bit odd or scary at first, but with some minor modifications and smart approaches, you can make it feel like home. You might be living in a studio apartment to save extra bucks or live close to work, whatever it is, you need to ensure that you are using every space this place provides to you.