Whether you own or rent an apartment, you can personalize your space and convert it into a comfortable haven. While giving your apartment a makeover can be a costly affair, you can use budget-friendly strategies to achieve your goals. You can still give your rented apartment a makeover without changing anything permanently. Giving your apartment a makeover is a fulfilling way of maximizing your space. Small changes in your apartment can give it a fresh feel without breaking the bank. Here is how to spruce up your apartment with affordable and accessible methods.
What You Should Know Before Customizing Your Apartment
Before personalizing or upgrading your rented apartment, always consult your landlord, especially if you don’t know whether such customizations are allowed or not. Different landlords have different rules about what a renter should do. Your landlord can guide you on how to spruce up your apartment. Don’t dispose of anything you remove from the apartment. For example, if you replace the sink faucets, toilet seats, or cabinet hardware, stow away what you remove safely. You can re-install them when you need to move houses.
Renovating an apartment can be costly. You need to set aside a budget and stick to it. If you have to spend more than your set budget on a rented apartment, ensure it’s on items you can carry to your new home. Don’t break the bank on non-reusable temporary fixes. Don’t undertake complex or dangerous tasks if you are not experienced enough. Instead, save them for the professionals. While you may want to do everything on your own to save costs, hiring an expert is the best way of ensuring tasks are executed professionally without endangering the lives of other tenants. Some tasks that may need the input of a professional include installing a ceiling fan or replacing faucets.
Visualize Your Home Design
Before embarking on your apartment makeover process, you must understand your expectations from the project. The lifestyle and design sector is evolving fast. Whether you want to improve your existing look or create a new layout, these are different options that meet your needs. To lay the foundation for your project, you want to determine whether you are satisfied with your current home design.
Are you comfortable in the apartment? Do you want to dispose of some decor pieces? Is any of your furniture blocking natural light from your home? Even the smallest rearrangement of your furniture can boost the functionality of your home. As a result, it’s crucial to consider decluttering your apartment or giving some furniture a facelift. Come up with a list of essential things in every room and determine their purpose. You can donate unnecessary items or hire a junk removal company to dispose of clutter. You can also sell some of the stuff you no longer use and earn money. A junk removal company can help you with this process.
Conceal Ugly Floors
If you are comparing different methods on how to source up your apartment, concealing an ugly floor is one of the most effective methods. Sometimes floors can be an eyesore, especially if you’ve lived there for a long time. Often, landlords use cheap and substandard flooring materials, especially in large apartments, and never bother to replace them as long as they remain functional. One of the best ways to improve the aesthetics of your apartment is by giving the floors a makeover. You can do so in various ways, such as installing vinyl plank flooring. Placing vinyl planks on top of an existing floor creates a hardwood floor appearance. These planks stick to themselves instead of the existing floor, making them easily removable. They are also cost-friendly and can be used in different apartment rooms.
Vinyl decals are effective for concealing ugly floors. They are stick-on and easily removable; you can use them to hide unsightly areas of your existing floor. All you need to do is place them on the existing floor and remove them quickly should the need arise. Prices can vary, but you can also get cost-friendly options in the market. Laying a rug on the floor is one of the simplest methods to manage ugly floors. Rugs are easy to remove and carry around when you move houses. If the tiles on your shower floor are rugged and unsightly, you can cover them with a wooden shower mat. Unlike cloth mats, wooden mats are resistant to bacteria, staining, and water. Further, you won’t need to step on a sponge after showering. They are also easy to clean.
Maximize Storage
Once you know how to spruce up your apartment, maximizing storage becomes easy. Many rental apartments lack sufficient storage space regardless of their overall size. To manage insufficient space, you should know how to maximize your current space. Suppose you want to create storage areas in the bathroom. Install a tension curtain rod along the back wall of the shower or bathtub and hang your bath products on the curtain hooks. Use this trick to store your children’s bath toys. Purchase cost-friendly plastic baskets and suspend the curtain rod about the bathtub to ensure it’s easily accessible.
Hang the basket on the shower hooks to contain the toys and ensure water drips back to the tub. One of the things you may struggle with before knowing how to spruce up your apartment is the usability of your bathroom storage. While many vanities in rental apartments may be spacious, they have no separators, making organization and accessibility difficult. You can hire local fine art appraisers to facilitate the installation of vanity drawers, which you can use to maintain organization in your house. Suppose you have no vanities and are struggling to determine how to spruce up your apartment.
Stackable drawers can come in handy to help you customize your space based on your preferences. These drawers are easily accessible and cost-friendly. You can also use them to maximize the area under your kitchen sink. Use under-shelves or shelf risers to leverage excess vertical space and use it for dish stacking. Under-shelves can be ideal for stacking food items in the fridge and making them accessible. You can also hang a basket below under shelves to keep things like wraps and foil. Knowing how to spruce up your apartment when you have limited space is vital. One of the creative methods you can use is to convert your storage ottoman or trunk into a coffee table.
Brighten the Walls with a Fresh Coat of Paint
Wondering how to spruce up your apartment? Repainting walls is one of the cheapest and easiest methods of brightening your home. Sometimes, you need to paint a different color to see the difference. Hire an experienced painter to help you make an informed choice. Before choosing a new color, you must ensure the tones are relaxing and eye-soothing. Light pastel palettes can be a great choice, but you can also experiment by painting your walls in different colors.
You can also use wallpaper to transform the appearance of the home. Always choose the ideal paint and finish. When choosing a new paint color, many apartment owners pay little attention to the type of finish. You must select the perfect finish to give your room a subtle effect. Use matte or flat colors to achieve a serene and velvety surface look. Satin and eggshells finish are ideal for flattering small spaces, especially those with sufficient natural light.
Treat Your Windows
Windows play a critical role in a home, allowing natural light and accommodating considerable wall space. Well-dressed windows give the house a luxurious and cozy feel. However, windows in some rental apartments can be ugly, but you can transform them by hiring a reliable window treatment service provider to spruce them up. The experts will assess the windows and recommend the best solution. Sometimes your windows may need simple repairs, while other times, window replacement may be inevitable. If your apartment has ugly window blinds, you can transform them by hanging curtains. Curtains can give the home an inviting, cozy, and homey feel. Before drilling holes to hang your curtains, check whether your lease allows you to do so. If it doesn’t, you can hold your rods with heavy-duty hooks.
Upgrade Lighting Fixtures
Want to know how to spruce up your apartment? Upgrade or change your lighting. Old and worn-out lighting fixtures can be unsightly. Today, there are numerous lighting solutions to choose from that can match your interior decor and your budget. These range from bedside lamps, chandeliers for a luxurious feel, and crystal lamps. Good lighting can help you create different effects in your apartment. For example, you can adjust them to make a dim or bright impact based on your preferences. Rugged overhead lighting fixtures are standard in many rental apartments. Find a creative way to customize them based on your preferences. For example, you can mount a drum shade or shell chandelier to improve the appearance of outdated lighting options.
Service the HVAC
The heating and cooling system is crucial in any home and must work well to improve indoor air quality. If the system is faulty, you need to hire an HVAC repair professional to assess and fix it. There are various things you should check before calling in an expert, like its age. This information is indicated on the data plate mounted on each appliance. The lifespan of an HVAC system is approximately 15 years. If the system has passed that age, you may need to replace it. Purchasing a new heating and cooling system can increase efficiency while reducing energy costs.
Watch out for leaks from your heating and cooling system. If your system leaks, it becomes less efficient and makes the air conditioner or furnace work harder, increasing utility bills. It can also affect the temperature in your home. Ask your landlord for maintenance records of the HVAC system to determine how often the previous owner replaced the filters. Strive to find out whether the system has experienced problems before. Consider hiring an AC repairs expert to inspect the system to ensure it’s in good working condition. While doing so may cost money, it will have long-term benefits.
Install a Ceiling Fan
Installing a ceiling fan can be ideal if you do not know how to spruce up your apartment. Ceiling fans are lighting fixes that can improve the functionality and appearance of your apartment. Many rental apartments don’t cool or heat evenly, but ceiling fans can help regulate temperatures in your home. They also improve the efficiency of the air conditioner or furnace, saving you money. Ceiling fans add more light in different areas based on your preference. You can combine them with a dimmer switch to lower the light when needed. To install a ceiling fan, you will need the help of a licensed electrician who can execute the job legally and professionally.
Declutter Your Home
Decluttering can be time-consuming, and while some people enjoy organizing and sorting their stuff, others find it tedious and tiring. Many people want to reduce unnecessary things to create a clean space without spending the entire weekend doing so. Decluttering doesn’t have to be a complicated process. All you need to do is pick a large trash bag or box and walk around the house throwing any junk in the bag. You can sort it later, throw anything you don’t need at the dumpsters area, donate what you can, and send recyclable items to the recycling plant.
If you have many things to dispose of, you may need to hire junk removal services to help execute the task. A cluttered space not only causes you stress, but it can also affect your productivity around the home. Decluttering your home is one of the best ways to discover lost items you may have been planning to purchase. One of the best ways of sprucing up your apartment is by personalizing it to fit your standards.
Use these steps and incorporate customized accessories to improve the appearance of your home. Renovating your home can be a daunting task; this is where a professional comes in. They can help you actualize your dream at cost-effective prices.