Decorating Your Apartment? Here's Your Step-By-Step Styling Game Plan!
Living Pretty Ep46 // Decorating Your Apartment? Here's Your Step-By-Step Styling Game Plan!
When decorating your apartment, do you ever wish someone would just give you a step by step styling game plan that tells you what to do? I feel that! Small apartment styling - or interior styling of any kind - can feel sooo overwhelming. How do you even get started?
So in this video, I’m giving you a master plan on how to decorate a small apartment so it doesn’t have to feel like such a mystery. I’m laying out exactly what you should expect from the full styling process!
If you need small apartment styling tips, studio apartment decor inspiration, and you’re dying to create that stylish apartment aesthetic you’ve been dreaming of, watch this video for your plan of action!
Video Transcript ↓
I’ve made some slight edits in the transcript below so that everything makes more sense in text form. But overall, this is almost a word-for-word dictation of what I say in the video. I’m a much better writer than this, I swear, haha.
So in last week’s video, I gave you a piece of apartment styling advice in which I said…
“I think if you just take, like, a half hour to sit down and plan out the action steps you think you need to take, you may find that it actually feels like a little less work. Because you’ll have it all on paper and it’s no longer some invisible monster you can’t define.”
It was a good piece of apartment styling advice, but I’ve been thinking about it. And I feel like I need to elaborate a little bit.
Planning out the action steps you need to take to create a stylish apartment is a good idea.
But you might be thinking…
“Um... Cool Steffi. Plan out my action steps for decorating my apartment. Yeah. Uh, I would love to know what those action steps actually are, because right now I’m just staring at the blank page where my to-do list should be and I feel like it’s mocking me with its utter blankness.”
I get it. So, allow me to help you fill that blank piece of paper where your to-do list for styling your apartment should be!
In this video, I’m going to give you a plan of action of specific things you need to do to style your apartment.
It’ll be a super simple, high level overview of all the main things you’ll need to do!
And if you’re new to my channel, my name is Steffi and I’m the creator of the interior style blog Moda Misfit, and you’re watching Living Pretty, the place for apartment styling tips and small space decor inspiration.
Just because you rent your space doesn’t mean you can’t own your style, so if you want to get inspired every week be sure to subscribe!
Also, if you live in a studio apartment and you want a free resource that will help you jumpstart your styling, I highly recommend you download my free Studio Styling 101 workbook!
Basically what I’m going to try to do here is keep things as simple as possible.
And if you do want to go beyond the broad overview in this video and get more into the details of styling an apartment, you might want to look into enrolling in my brand new course, Small Apartment Styling School, next week!
And if you join the waitlist, you’ll get a special little treat from me to you in your inbox, which is a 25% discount code you can apply at checkout when you enroll in the course!
Now let’s get into these overall action steps you should plan on taking when you’re in the throes of your apartment decorating journey.
I separate the interior styling process into two overarching phases:
Getting your head straight
Getting your home straight.
Because I firmly believe that you have to get your head straight before you get your home straight! So you start with your mind before you start taking action on bringing things together in your space.
Let’s talk about getting your head straight first.
This involves building your styling confidence and getting in touch with your personal interior style.
To build your interior styling confidence, here’s an overview of what to do!
1. Ask yourself the right questions
First, ask yourself the right questions. In Small Apartment Styling School, I have a whole lesson dedicated to coaching you through this, but for now, here are a few key questions you should ask yourself to get started!
What are some words you’d use to describe yourself?
What are some things you love to do, see, and experience?
How do you want your space to make you feel?
I talk about these questions in this video as well, but it really bears repeating here.
It’s so important to ask yourself these questions right off the bat and establish what’s important to you as an individual person with a unique space.
Here are a few more questions…
How would you describe your dream apartment?
What’s in your dream apartment?
What colors does your dream apartment have?
What vibe does your dream apartment convey?
These questions are important to ask because they help you get in tune with yourself and figure out how you factor into your styling.
Because my whole approach to interior styling revolves around making sure you are reflected in your space, not just filling it with pretty things.
2. Let go of perfectionism
After asking yourself the right questions to get in touch with your interior style, the next big part of building your interior styling confidence is to really drill it into your head that there’s no such thing as perfection.
It’s very easy to get out of touch with that fact, especially when we’re being inundated with beautiful aspirational home decor images on Pinterest and Instagram.
So right now I’m going to give you a quick, simple mindset exercise to keep this perfectionism thing top of mind. Warning, it may strike you as a bit cheesy, but it is what it is!
So here’s the exercise…
Sit down and write some motivational messages to yourself on sticky notes, then stick them around your apartment as constant reminders that perfection doesn’t exist and that you got this.
Not sure what motivational messages to write on your sticky notes? Here are some Moda Misfit words of wisdom on styling you can use!
“Your apartment is destined to be pretty, and you are pretty powerful.”
“You are naturally stylish because you are an innately creative human being.”
“When styling your space, give yourself yourself grace.”
“Good interior styling starts with the brilliant thing between your ears, not with the pretty things you can buy.”
“Every stylish space had to look shitty before it could be pretty.”
Keep them up until you feel like you’re about done styling your apartment. The point here is that I don’t want you to forget how capable you are of styling your apartment, and visual reminders like this really can help.
And when you feel discouraged, try to remind yourself why styling your apartment is worth the effort. Watch this video for a pep talk on why it really is worth it!
3. Establish a decor budget
Before we move on to discovering your personal style, here’s one more way to build up your interior styling confidence: establish a budget.
Money worries can be a huge detractor when it comes to feeling confident about decorating.
So it’s a good idea to keep track of your spending and lay it all out in a budget so you can stay super crystal clear on how you’re spending your money on decor.
And if you want to get nice and nerdy with it, I would straight up create a spreadsheet.
In Small Apartment Styling School, I provide a fillable Google Sheets budget you can use to track not only your decor spending, but your regular life spending so you can integrate the two together.
But if you want to create a simple spreadsheet for yourself, I recommend just opening a Google Sheets or Excel doc and listing out the things you think you need to buy.
Set spending goals for yourself for each item, and then fill it out with what you’re actually spending on each item, so your money situation doesn’t have to remain a mystery as you’re decorating.
So those were some main ways on building your interior styling confidence. Now let’s talk about discovering your personal style!
You may feel kind of stuck when it comes to discovering your personal style, and you may even feel like you’re having a full blown style identity crisis. That’s totally normal.
Here’s how you bring things into focus!
1. Research different styles out there. Which ones resonate with you?
A good starting point if you’re at the beginning of figuring this out for yourself would be to watch this video of mine.
It’s sort of a video quiz that asks you some questions that lead to different interior styles based on your answers. It can help you get acquainted with some of the different interior styles out there and which ones might be a good fit for you.
2. Gather your visual inspiration
Once you have even a loose handle on the types of styles you gravitate toward, it’s time to find your visual inspiration for those styles.
This is where Pinterest usually comes in, but I have a very specific approach to using Pinterest for decor inspiration.
In this video, I explain my Mindful Pinning strategy, which helps with gathering inspiration without feeling totally overwhelmed and feeling like you’re drowning in a sea of pins. It’s just a much more focused approach to pinning images.
Then there’s Instagram for gathering visual inspiration.
To discover Instagram accounts that convey a style you’re interested in, try searching hashtags for that style.
For example, if you’re interested in dark decor, simply searching #darkdecor on Instagram will lead you to some really inspiring Instagram accounts that will help you get your vision into focus!
If you sign up for Small Apartment Styling School next week, you’ll get my 50+ page Interior Inspiration Database pdf, which covers 10 different interior styles and provides roundups of Pinterest keywords and inspiring Instagram accounts to follow for each of those 10 styles!
So if you find it daunting to scour Instagram and Pinterest for decor inspiration, the Interior Inspiration Database zeroes in on all of it for you.
3. Explore your closet
Another way to get in touch with your personal interior style is to simply explore your closet. There is so much insight to be found in there!
Your choice in clothing over the years says something about you and your style. Your closet is basically a style portfolio you’ve been gathering for years. Observe it.
What are some things in your closet that really exemplify your style? Like, what are some of your favorite pieces of clothing? How can you translate them in your apartment decorating?
If you’re having an interior style identity crisis, you might find some answers in your closet!
So that was an overview of the Get Your Head Straight phase of the interior styling process.
Now let’s talk about the more action-based phase of Getting Your Home Straight.
This is when you start shopping!
So when you first start shopping, start casual. Just start browsing, familiarizing yourself with what's out there, establishing what you like and don’t like.
While you’re doing this, just make sure you’re keeping track of the links to the things you like and saving them somewhere so you can come back to them later.
1. Moodboarding & shopping lists
When you’re ready, you can start getting more organized with moodboarding and shopping lists.
You can use a program like Canva - which is super easy and free - to create mood boards of the items you’re thinking about buying and get a visual on what they might look like together.
You can also use something like Trello, another free online tool, to create a visual shopping list, which would look something like this…
2. Seek out personality pieces
Along with staying organized while shopping, you also want to make sure that you’re specifically shopping for things that express your personality.
This is where your answer to the question from earlier about what you like to do, see, and experience in life comes in!
Try to think creatively about how you can express those things about you through your decor and shop accordingly.
This is how you create a space that isn’t just pretty, but actually expresses who you are as a person!
I talk about how to express your personality through your decor in detail in this video if you want some tips!
3. Measure everything
And finally when it comes to shopping for your decor, you want to make sure that you’re always measuring things.
Measure out your whole apartment - all the walls, all the nooks and crannies, everything you could think of measuring. Measure that shit.
And always measure out each piece of furniture you’re thinking about buying within your space. Look at the measurements listed online for the item, then use a tape measure to mark it out.
As you start buying things, you’ll be arranging and styling your apartment with those things - which is the second part of the Get Your Home Straight phase.
Honestly, when it comes to arranging at styling your apartment, that's where it's really different for everyone.
Truly, if you want my arranging and styling advice, you may just want to do a Living Pretty video binge, because I couldn’t possibly cover everything here!
But really, at the end of the day, every apartment presents its own unique situation when it comes to arranging and styling.
Which is one of the big reasons why I created Small Apartment Styling School is because there’s going to be a Facebook group attached to that course for five weeks where I’ll be able to give specific feedback and styling advice to students!
Well, that was my broad overview of the main steps you should plan on taking in your apartment styling process!
When it comes to styling your apartment, if you feel like you need more of a deep, detailed, involved experience than I can provide in a YouTube video, Small Apartment Styling School may be exactly what you need.
It’s 23 lessons - that’s 5 hours of content (I basically created a TV-mini series worth of videos for this), a bunch of workbooks to help you along, and a 5-week Facebook group in which I’ll be answering students’ questions about their specific apartment styling situations.
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.