9 Smart Design Ideas For Your Studio Apartment

Though there are some downsides to living in a studio apartment — not having as much space for your stuff, feeling like you’re living in your bedroom — it can be a cozy and fun living experience, too. Stick to these design tricks when decorating a studio apartment and you’ll love studio living.

Don’t have a bedroom but do have a closet you can fit a bed into? Or is there a way to drape curtains around your bed to create a private bed nook? Anything you can do to set your bed apart from the rest of your studio apartment will make the whole space feel less like you’re living in just one room — a bedroom you also eat and live in!

Don’t let wall and ceiling space go to waste. Use your walls to add hooks or pegs so you can hang functional items as well as decor. And use your ceiling to hang things like pot racks or storage netting to gain even more storage space.

Don’t necessarily shy away from big furniture. Though you might feel like you have to go small because you have a small studio, a lot of small furniture sprinkled around might make your studio feel cluttered and too busy. Whereas a few smart, larger pieces could make your studio feel even bigger and airier.

Though small dark spaces can look dramatic, when in doubt, always work to lighten and brighten your small studio. Making it brighter will make it feel bigger. So clean windows and take away any items that might be obscuring natural light. Lighten with paint colors and materials choices. Add light where it’s needed.

It’s a fun designer trick. If you have the need for a table or chairs but don’t want it to feel like a table or chairs are cluttering your space, find see-through furniture! Furniture made with clear materials can give you the function you need without the visual bulk.

Even beds on the smaller side still take up a lot of floor space. Get double the use out of that space by raising your bed for extra storage. You can do it simply by adding risers that give you a few more inches of under-bed storage, or if you’re handy, you can build a loft area (with landlord permission, of course) that can add usable space under your bed to add to your studio apartment’s square footage.

Use mirrors on the walls or leaning on the floor to reflect natural light and bounce it around a small space, making it feel larger. But also consider choosing mirrored furniture, as well. Not only will it also reflect light, like clear furniture, mirrored furniture helps cut down on the feeling of bulky furniture.

Sometimes dividers in a studio can make a studio seem choppy, cluttered and claustrophobic. If you do feel like you need some division between your living areas, go for dividers that let light through or that are perhaps not super high. This can help hint at a visual division without feeling too closed off.

To avoid making your studio apartment feel like a closet and to cut down on it feeling cluttered, work on camouflaging your storage in the space. You can do that by using double duty furniture that looks like something else (like a trunk for a coffee table or ottomans with hidden storage inside) or by painting or buying storage in the same color as your walls so that it blends into your studio apartment, not dominates it.