1. Measure. Before you do anything, measure your space. Even floor to ceiling! Every measure is important. You don't want to put down an arm and a leg worth of money on furniture only to find out it doesn't fit. Hint: If you can't measure your space prior to moving in, wait to purchase your things until AFTER you've moved in. It may be inconvenient, but so is cramping up your space with not necessary items.
 |
| This is my dorm room AFTER I'd already rearranged it. But you can get an idea to how empty and plain it was. |
2. Make a plan. After you have measured your space, really think about what you want to do with it. Consider all the options. Organize your list from what is most important to you to what is least important. For me, I HAD to have a couch in my dorm room. I hated doing my readings for class at my desk, and a couch makes guests comfortable. Everything else for my room came second.
3. Angles. Not everything in your room has to be perfectly straight. In fact, putting things on angles can sometimes take up LESS space. In my dorm room I was provided with a massive dresser. Having to fit a bedroom, living room, kitchen, and study area into such a small space I wasn't sure where to put my dresser without it distracting people and taking up too much room. I ended up putting it by the door so people didn't really notice it when they looked the full room over, and putting it at an angle allowed it to take up less space near the door. Angles are also appealing to the eye bringing an extra flare to your room.
4. Build UP not out. This was hard thing for me to learn as I'm only 4'10'' and not only am I not able to put things in high spots, but I can't reach them once they are there. However, this is KEY to making the most out of a small space. Keeping everything at a low level will only take up floor room and leave you with less decorating possibilities. This is why my first tip was to measure even from floor to ceiling. You are going to have a lot of wall space, take some of it up with appliances that would just be in the way on the floor. For example, in my dorm room I had a mini fridge. Under my bed was problematic because I would have to lift up my bedding to get to any of it. I also didn't want it just sitting on the ground because this made the space look ugly. To solve this I ended up having a friend put it on top of my massive dresser that I put on an angle near the door. This allowed the food to be on a decent level for my friends in addition to not distracting from my rooms look.
 |
| My desk at the right, and dress at the left are both on angles. |
5. Pick a theme and keep to it. Keeping to a theme will allow you to limit yourself on what you do in your room and will prevent bringing too much unnecessary items. For me, my theme was art and colors. Drawings serve the dual purpose of helping me to relax by creating them to relax and to cover the basic white university walls. Taking the colors from my drawing I brought them out in many elements such as the canopy above my bed and my curtains. It turned out to be a fun, colorful, put together room! *Below is my room at two different angles. You can see how I used the room as both colorful and artistic.
I hope these tips helped! If you have any questions or additional tips about how to make the most out of a small space make sure to leave them in the comments or tweet me @hayleykaye1234
Don't forget: You're beautiful!
HayleyKaye :)
No comments:
Post a Comment