7 Tips to Style One-Bedroom Apartments Affordably, Designers Share

Small one-bedroom apartments are inherently cozy, but it’s personalized decor that really makes them feel like home. Defining your interior style, strategically arranging your furniture, and maximizing your storage space are all ways to achieve a home you love.

Design mistakes can be expensive, so to eliminate some of the trial and error involved in decorating your one-bedroom apartment, with these designer tips.

 Use Design Elements to Zone Areas.

Spaces often have to serve dual purposes in one-bedroom apartments. Your bedroom may need to double as your home office, and your living room may also need to house your dining table.

You can create visual separation between the two room functions by applying contrasting design elements, like colors and textures that stand out from one another, in each of the spaces. You can do this with area rugs and wall treatments.

Designer Oyin Antwi offers a great example of this trick at play. Her favorite affordable way to separate a dining area from a living area is with a statement wall. Paint or wallpaper is always a safe bet for statement walls, but Antwi loves hanging wall-mounted acoustic wood panels behind a dining table.

“This not only creates visual separation in the open space, but also provides sound insulation and gives the illusion of added height in the space,” she says.

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Create Physical Boundaries with Furniture

Elements of design create visual separation between two living spaces, but furniture can help draw a physical barrier. You don’t need to purchase new furniture to achieve this; just rethink the layout.

This is especially important if your home office is in your bedroom. In this case, designer Maria Wilson suggests angling your desk toward a window and backing it with a low bookshelf to establish a clear boundary between your work and relaxation zones. Tall bookshelves can also act as functional room dividers in a living room.

For a living room and dining room combo, you can use the back of the couch as a room divider and position your table behind it.

Invest in Dual Purpose Furniture

If you do have it in your budget to purchase new furniture, make it count. To maximize every inch of space in a 2-in-1 concept room, both Wilson and Antwi rely on dual-purpose furniture.

Some examples of furniture that can serve two purposes include: a console or sofa table that doubles as a desk, or even a storage ottoman that doubles as a coffee table and overflow seating.

Take Advantage of Vertical Space

Use your apartment’s vertical height to your advantage by storing the items you don’t use often in boxes on high shelves and tucked away deep.

Even if you’re renting, it still might be worth installing a few extra shelves in your closets for this purpose. Whatever route you choose, the goal is to store as many items out of sight as possible so they don’t compete with your decor.

“As a general note, choose cabinets over open shelving if you’re prone to clutter,” Antwi says.

Use Light to Your Advantage

Light is a very powerful design tool in a one-bedroom apartment. You can use it to carve out separate spaces or use it to create the illusion of more space.

If your dining area is located within your living room, Antwi suggests installing mood lighting around the table to create a cozy nook for conversations. If you’re renting, she notes that a floor lamp or battery-operated light sconces will do the trick.

Strategically positioning mirrors across from a light source amplifies this effect can also make a room look bigger. Wilson especially likes positioning a mirror across from a window in a small bedroom that doubles as a home office.

“This adds a sense of airiness and brightness to the space for when you get ready in the morning or work from home throughout the day.”

Choose Cohesive Decor

Sticking with a limited color palette and a certain style of decor can help you avoid a busy, cluttered look in small living quarters, according to Antwi.

“Based on how you want to feel in your apartment or what speaks to your personality, decide if you want an industrial, bohemian, Afrocentric, minimalist or modern style, or a combo design style like Japandi,” she says. “This will allow you to establish the color palette, materials, and furniture that align with that design style that you can carry throughout the apartment.”

Invest in Small, but Minimal Furniture

If you’re about ready to move into a one-bedroom apartment, it’s probably not the best season of life to invest in a king-sized bed. Instead, go with smaller pieces. Not only is smaller furniture typically more affordable, but it will also keep the space from feeling cramped.

“Focus on scale,” Wilson says. “Choose furniture that fits the space rather than trying to force oversized pieces in.”

However, the key is not to overdo and purchase too much small furniture. Just because you can fit more than one small accent chair into your living room instead of a big singular one, doesn’t mean you need two.