How To Get Started On Your Studio Apartment Decor
Living Pretty Ep1: Studio Apartment Decor Tips | How to Get Started! (Decorating Mindset Advice & Shopping Pointers)
Hey pretty! So you’re ready to decorate your studio apartment, but you have no idea how to get started? This video will show you 3 steps to getting mindset in the right place so you can confidently get started on how to decorate a studio apartment.
If you’re looking for small apartment tips, how to find your decorating style for your home, or studio apartment ideas, this video will walk you through the key steps you need to take before you start buying furniture and interior decor - so you can feel amazing about your home decor.
Get your head straight before you get your home straight!
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So you’re ready to start decorating your studio apartment, but there’s one big thing in your way… and that is you have no idea where to start.
I’ve been there. I’ve been there so hard.
It’s so overwhelming! All you have is one big lump of space - it’s a studio. Or actually, it’s more like one small lump of space. What are you supposed to do with it?
When I was in the process of decorating my studio apartment, and ultimately making it into my dream space, there were three key things that I did in the very beginning of the process that made it so my head was on straight.
And like I always say: you need to get your head straight before you get your home straight.
So in this video, I’m going to share those three key steps that will help you feel ready - finally - to get started and create the retreat that you deserve to come home to every day.
I’m Steffi and I’m the creator of the style blog, Moda Misfit. You’re watching my YouTube channel, Living Pretty - the place for apartment styling tips and inspiration. Just because you rent your space, doesn’t mean you can’t own your style. So let’s find the power in the pretty, because your style is pretty powerful.
So let’s get started! Step number one is to get inspired.
Create a Pinterest board that is exclusively meant for inspiration photos for your decor. But here’s the thing: you have to be super, super selective on what you put on this board, because it could easily end up being just a hodgepodge of images. And the idea here is to get extremely organized and really drill down on what you truly love.
Same thing goes for Instagram. There are some incredible interior decor focused Instagram accounts out there that have incredibly inspiring images of their homes. And like a Pinterest board, you can save down all of those inspiring images. But again, be super selective. Don’t overwhelm yourself, because this is already overwhelming, isn’t it?
Now you may be sitting there thinking “Steffi, I already spend a ton of time on Pinterest and Instagram. And I already have tons of Pinterest boards that inspire me!” Yes, you probably do, but I recommend adopting a little bit of a different mindset as you’re scrolling through these images. Really think about what speaks to you. Really think about what you could see yourself in.
Create one Pinterest board and one Instagram save folder, and that’s it. And as you go forward, hold onto these inspiring images like they’re something precious. Because if you really let them speak to you, they’ll manifest in your space.
Key step number two is: ask yourself “what do I want?”
Now that you have a whole bunch of Pinterest and Instagram visual inspiration floating around in your head, it’s time to ask yourself, “what do I want my space to make me feel?”
It may seem like a pretty touchy-feely question but it’s really important. This is the space you come home to from work every day. It’s the space that you fall asleep in at night and wake up in in the morning. It’s important for it to make you feel the way that you want to feel every day.
Write down on a post-it note, or write down in your notes app in your phone: “I want my space to make me feel ‘blank’... I want my space to make me feel warm. I want my space to make me feel excited’”. Whatever feeling you want to tap into, just from existing in your space, write it down. Be intentional about it.
If you’ve attempted to decorate a space before and you found that it just wasn’t clicking together and you couldn’t figure out why it felt like such an incoherent hodgepodge, there’s a good chance that it was because you didn’t tap into what you actually wanted the space to make you feel.
You’ll have a more successful shopping trip if you’re connected to what you really want.
Now, comment below and tell me: how do you want your space to make you feel? How do you want your space to make you feel the second you walk home after a long day at work. Comment below and tell me!
We’ve talked about the first two major steps that I took to get started on my studio apartment decorating: first, getting inspired, and second asking yourself what you truly want. And the third step is to start shopping!
But don’t just shop. You need to shop and leave bread crumbs. Now, here’s what I mean when I say “leave breadcrumbs”. Don’t just mindlessly shop online. Don’t just pass by something and say “hmm, I think I might like that” and then leave it forever. You have to leave breadcrumbs. Get all Hansel and Gretel with this shit, or else you’ll get lost in the woods.
Create a system for yourself. A system for actually staying organized and keeping track of the things that you might want to buy. And there a few ways that you can do this.
It can be as simple as a Word document. I actually just used a simple Word document when I moved into my apartment in LA a few years ago. It was simply just a Word document with photos of the things I was thinking about buying and then the links underneath that. And I’m telling you, that saved my life. It made my life so much easier. It was pretty rudimentary because it was just a Word document with links and pictures, but it really worked.
If you’re shopping in person, take photos - it may seem simple - but take photos of the things that you like. Not only just the photos of the items, but also of the tags. Taking a photo of the tag as well as the item you’re thinking about buying makes it so that you have all the information on the tag like item number and whatever else, so that if you want to look the thing up online, you have all the information to do it.
And if you really want to up your game, there’s actually a really cool tool called Canva, which is what I use for my interior styling projects. What you can do in Canva, is you can actually create mood boards and not only keep track of the items that you’re interested in buying, but also piece them together in the program and make a mood board so that you can see how these items might look together. And you can also attach links to those items so that you can easily click a photo of the chair you’re thinking about buying and it’ll take you right there.
Spoiler alert: my next video is going to be a tutorial on Canva, so stay tuned!
You can see some examples of my Canva mood boards on a couple blog posts that I’ve done, which I will link to in the description.
So there you have it - the three key steps that I took that made it so that I just felt more together, more organized, and more ready to actually purchase things and then decorate my studio apartment with them.
If you do these three very simple things, you’ll find that the whole process of decorating is a little less overwhelming. Some of it may seem super basic, but man, so many people skip these steps and then wonder why they feel completely lost when they’re decorating their apartment.
So, what if you’re still feeling a bit overwhelmed and scatter-brained about all this? If you want to dive a little deeper and you want an actual resource that you can cling to through this process, I’ve created a free workbook that you can download as a pdf called Studio Styling 101. I’m going to link to that in the description so you can go ahead and download it! [or click here to get it!]
Studio Styling 101 is a free workbook that walks you through the same principals that I’ve touched on in this video a bit more in depth, and actually helps you put them into action.
For more studio apartment inspiration, follow me on Instagram @moda.misfit for daily posts from here in my studio!
If you liked this video, please let me know by hitting the like button below, and share it with your fellow studio apartment dwellers.
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