How To Modernize Your Small Apartment With Furniture

Furnishing a small apartment can seem like a daunting task. It’s easy to overcrowd your space, especially if you’re working with limited square footage. While tiny apartments are typically cheaper and easier to maintain, making your place feel like home can be challenging. On top of that, finding ways to stay up-to-date with the latest trends can feel impossible if they don’t have small spaces in mind.

Optimizing your space is a science that anyone can learn. If you’re stressed and looking for the best ways to furnish your modest home, don’t panic! Discover how to modernize your small apartment with furniture to get the most out of your living area.

Reduce Visual Weight

Visual weight is an interior design concept that refers to how our eyes interpret the weight of various objects. Things with a lot of visual weight look heavy and often appear to take up a lot of space. For example, large items sitting close to the ground will pull the room “down” and make everything feel more cluttered than it actually is.

If you want to modernize your small apartment with furniture, try reducing your space’s visual weight first. Lift couches off of the ground with taller legs, find smaller pieces to furnish with, and rearrange your items so that heavier elements don’t stand alone. Doing so will create a necessary balance that will upgrade your living area and make your space feel larger.

Find Multi-Functional Pieces

Small apartments don’t always have room for basic home components, like dining rooms and home offices. However, this doesn’t mean you have to go without these spaces. You can enjoy all of the home elements you desire without overcrowding or expanding your area by finding multi-functional pieces of furniture. Even a small apartment can accommodate a dining area.

Instead of cramming a dining room table into your limited space, invest in some barstools to turn your kitchen island into an eating area. Use stools, trunks, and other seating options with hidden storage to get more use out of your furniture. Multi-purpose pieces allow you to maximize your current square footage by performing double-duty, reducing the amount of stuff in your apartment that could make your place feel over-cluttered.

Use All of Your Space

When it comes to small apartments, using every inch of your place is essential. You probably won’t have a lot of extra room for empty areas, so optimizing your unused space is key to upgrading your modestly-sized home. Don’t be afraid to utilize every corner for seating, lighting, and storage to create more room and give your apartment a modern edge.

While it may seem like large pieces like sectional sofas will add more visual weight, lifting them up off of the ground will give an illusion of more space while creating a functional living room. You should also push furniture like couches, beds, and dressers up against the wall to maximize your floor space. This will create more room for decorative pieces that add character to your apartment.

Do More With Less

If you’re looking to refresh your apartment with a more modern interior design style, look towards minimalism to make the most of your limited square footage. Minimalism is a huge trend that doesn’t seem to be losing interest, making it the perfect aesthetic for renters looking to optimize their space. This aesthetic is especially useful for people with statement elements in their homes, like fireplaces or hardwood floors.

Let your home’s solid foundation speak for itself by doing more with less stuff. Decluttering is the first step. Instead of filling your apartment with arbitrary objects, choose a few essential pieces and let your focal points shine. This will give you room to breathe and move around without making your place feel empty or unestablished.

Stick With a Light Color Palette

One of the first tips any interior designer will tell you about increasing space is to use light colors. Dark hues can make an already small room look even smaller, emphasizing shadows and limiting natural light. While painting walls, trims, and ceilings, light colors might not be practical for every renter, you can apply this theory to your furniture to make your rooms look bigger.

Dark fabrics and materials add more visual weight to a room and make it appear overcrowded. Find pieces with bright, delicate shades to open up your space, like cream couches, light-colored wood furniture, and sheer drapes. These items will reflect light and trick your eye into thinking there is more space than there really is.

Create Visual Height

Another important interior design concept you should know about to upgrade your small space is visual height. Like visual weight, this idea refers to how we interpret an object's size and how it interacts with the rest of your area. Working “up” instead of “out” is your best bet to get the most out of your square footage in small apartments.

Use tall pieces of furniture to increase any room’s visual height. You can do this with bookshelves, light fixtures, and mounted shelves to draw your attention “up.” This technique is perfect for rentals with high ceilings since you’ll have a lot of unused room to work with. Some of these pieces may also be multi-functional and offer additional storage, which is perfect for modest apartments.

Furnish With Delicate Shapes

Opting for furniture with subdued lines and shapes will make your place feel bigger while upgrading your current interior aesthetic. Trend forecasters report that soft lines and gentle angles are in for 2022. This is excellent news for people renting small apartments, since delicate shapes can reduce a room’s visual weight and make the space appear larger.

Avoid harsh lines by choosing furniture with curves. You can find sofas with rounded backs and armrests, circular tables, and arched light fixtures to take off that heavy edge weighing your space down. Experimenting with interesting, unexpected shapes will also modernize your apartment without making it feel too cluttered.

Just because you have a small apartment doesn’t mean you need to settle outdated, overcrowded design styles. Being mindful about your furniture is the first step to optimizing your space while incorporating your own personality. Let Supernova Furniture get your place up-to-date with smart furnishings that fit your needs. We have seven furniture store locations in the Houston area. Stop by today to refresh your apartment and get the most out of your living space.