Refresh Your Apartment With The Furniture You Own

Refresh Your Apartment With The Furniture You Own

San Francisco living room

Trends come and go in the world of interior design, but there are certain rules that stay constant. For classically trained interior designers, spacing and arrangement are just as important as choosing the perfect art and furniture. If you are looking for ways to freshen up your home, it is a good idea to rearrange your existing parts before buying new furniture. A few spacing adjustments can sometimes make a bigger difference than a brand new couch or piece of art. As you rearrange, you can experiment with different layouts. You just move things around, as long as you don’t poke a hole in the wall, nothing is permanent.

Carpets

Carpet placement

Finding the carpet with the appropriate area is the first step in setting up a room. When trying to freshen up your home, play around with different carpet combinations. Swap the carpet in your bedroom for the carpet in your living room and see what sticks. Or try moving an area rug 90 degrees and rearranging the furniture layout. Center everything around your rug so that the furniture fits exactly around the perimeter. Check out how we placed this sectional sofa and coffee table in this luxury apartment in the Upper East Side.

De-interference

Debug your apartment

If you want to freshen up your home quickly, you know that less is more. If a room feels crowded, consider interference filtering. First, choose the piece of furniture that is least needed and move it to another room in the house or just remove it. When you have limited your space to the bare essentials, try different furniture arrangements until you find the one that suits you. Check out the drastic difference clearing has made on this New Jersey home staging.

Rehang art and mirrors

how to hang art

Once you’ve tidied up your space and moved your furniture, it’s time to hang art and mirrors. Foyers can be one of the trickiest places to decorate your home and are a great place to hang a mirror. When placing artwork, start with the biggest things and then work your way down. Center your largest piece on the wall behind your couch, like we did in this luxury San Francisco apartment, then hang smaller pieces accordingly.

Move your end tables

Placement of the side table

If your living room is limited in space, there may be no need to have end tables in addition to a coffee table. Try using your end tables as bedside tables, or even consider getting rid of them. The living room in this Scarsdale family home eschews end tables and uses a single large coffee table instead.

Turn on your lights

Placement of the pendant light

If you live in New York, you probably don’t have a lot of space in your apartment. While proper lighting is an absolute necessity in any room, it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice valuable floor space. Bedrooms don’t need a lot of light, so all you really need is lamps on your end table. And if you currently have a floor lamp, consider replacing that with a pendant lamp like we did in this SoHo duplex.