A 545-Square-Foot Modern Rental Feels Much Larger Thanks to the Monochrome Palette

Name: Logan Reulet
Location: Downtown Salt Lake City, Utah
Type of home: Apartment
Size: 545 square feet
Years lived in: 2.5 years, renting

Tell us a little (or a lot) about your home and the people who live there: Two and a half years ago I relocated to Salt Lake from Louisville, Kentucky. I had my eye on this building after seeing old listings while researching the area. Be it fate or luck, on my first day of apartment hunting, a unit became available. I was instantly sold on the building’s character, tall ceilings, and natural light. I work in commercial photography as a stylist and art director. In my profession, I’m constantly switching gears between various styles and trends on set, so I need my home to be a sanctuary from that world. For me, that’s a space that feels a bit more timeless, filled with more personal treasures than trends.

If you saw my closet, you would definitely see the correlation. I thrive in monochrome. For me that’s a palette of white, beige, and sand tones. This also prevents me from being tied down to a particular design style. I’m drawn to decor and furniture from all sorts of eras, but as long as I stick to my palette, it tends to work out. And whether neutral or saturated, keeping a monochromatic color scheme inevitable makes a small space feel 10 times larger. So that’s an added bonus.

Describe your home’s style in 5 words or less: Collected, thoughtful, modernist.

What is your favorite room and why? Definitely the living room. When I first moved in, I defaulted to the standard setup most of us think of when furnishing a living room: Sofa, side chairs, coffee table. Done. After being in lockdown for a few months, it became painfully obvious that this wasn’t working for the way I lived. I don’t own a TV, no one was coming over, and I was primarily working from home. Things needed to change. I sold my sofa and replaced it with a vintage centipede bench. Switched out a long coffee table for a set of nesting tables that are easy to move around. For WFH, I brought in a marble bistro table paired with vintage leather dining chairs and installed a pendant light. Now the room really works for me, and it’s made a huge difference in how I interact with the space daily.

What’s the last thing you bought (or found!) for your home? The last thing I purchased was the postmodern mirror for the entry hallway. I spotted it in the Instagram story of a vintage seller (@thebeauideal) and had to have it.

Any advice for creating a home you love? Start with storage. This is particularly important in a small footprint I think. If you KNOW that you will need additional storage in a space, plan ahead for it. Maybe you know you’ll need a hutch, or a few tall bookcases, or a large armoire. Whatever it might be, working your furniture layout around casegoods is much easier than trying to come up with storage solutions after the fact.

This submission’s responses and photos were edited for length/size and clarity.

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