It's Apartment Tour Week on This Styled Life! Are you excited?! Because I am!
Bouncing off of my previous post Decorating 101: Starting from Scratch with Invaluable, today I'm sharing how I went about decorating my living room in my new apartment. Going from living with roommates to living on my own meant I could make it 100% mine, which I looked forward to. Being in college, obviously I was limited by budget and needed to use a lot of existing pieces. But being an interior design major, I had the perfect look I wanted in my head and knew that if I didn't come close it would drive me crazy. In the words of Barney Stinson, challenge accepted!
So I started by assessing what I already owned: yellow rug, vintage trunk as a coffee table, dark walnut dining set (the dining room, living room, and kitchen are all one room in the new apartment so this was important), and a tan side chair with travel-inspired lettering on it. I knew these pieces would have to be the basis for my design, so I developed a color palette off of that.
After yellow, tan, and brown, I decided to add navy blue, a bridge between the lighter and darker colors that would add some sophistication to the yellow. I kept this all in the back of my mind, and then went to Italy on study abroad for the summer. There, I collected art piece after art piece after art piece, eventually deciding that I would want to put all of these pieces up on a gallery wall display.
Upon my return, I was inside Home Goods and was drawn to a pillows set that had navy, mustard yellow, burnt orange, and teal colors against a tan background. They were the perfect piece to bring the colors I was envisioning together. From there, I purchased navy curtains, and frames for all of my art. (I'll be posting on Thursday about my gallery wall and my tips & tricks with that!) This all happened before I even had the keys to the new place, but I was just so excited to start the decorating process!
(The cool architect's lamp was actually for my desk in my bedroom, and you can see some of the first frames I bought and already put art in!)
Once I had keys in hand, I started piecing the rest together! The bookshelf that was in my bedroom became my entertainment center. Kyle and I picked out a couch that would work for this apartment of mine but that would also move with us to our next place together. One weekend I re-painted my trunk to make it work better in the space.
The end result is pretty darn close to what I was envisioning, and I'm really happy with how my first (and only) solo apartment looks! Check back tomorrow for the full living room review. You know I just had to keep up the suspense. :)
--Caroline
