Make Your Room Look Like an Apartment

If you are fortunate enough to have your own bedroom in a home you share with others yet discontent with having communal space, or, if you are something of a hermit, you might like to transform your bedroom, or any other room in your home, so that it appears to be an apartment, bedsit or studio flat. Unless you have access to a fully functioning toilet and a water supply, you obviously cannot convert your room into an apartment, but you can make it look like one and, like a child with a Wendy House, play house.

Steps

  1. Ask your parent's permission if you live at home with them. This is important as your room belongs to them as does the furniture you'll be wanting to use.
  2. Clear out the room. At this point you may also wish to vacuum and clean or paint walls. Remember, you may need permission to paint the wall. Take any posters down and remove tacks from the walls. Strip the room entirely.
  3. Make a plan. Decide which areas of your room are going to act as the rooms of your apartment. You might want a lounge, dining area, hall, bathroom, kitchen or just some of these.

Front door

  1. Pretend your bedroom or room door is the front door of your apartment. Put up a doorbell, attach numbers to your door if you like.
  2. Put a potted plant outside your door or a chair if you prefer. Many actual apartments have plants or chairs by their front doors.
  3. Add a little mailbox for letters, even if it's just a painted cardboard box. Someone might want to write a letter to you in your room that looks like a an apartment.

Hall

  1. Simulate a hall area. Set up a coat rack and a shoe rack. Remember to have storage for the costs and shoes of your visitors, as well as your own.
  2. Lay down a door mat by the door. Have one that says welcome if you like. Make sure that it doesn't impede the door opening and closing.
  3. Place a small table in your hall area and put some flowers and a phone with a cord on the table. Don't leave your mobile phone on this table, that won't make your room look like an apartment at all. You can put anything else you liked on the table, keys, a vase, loose change, etc. Add what is usually on a hall table.
  4. Put a mirror on the wall if there is space for a mirror. You may have a mirror in your bedroom area or bathroom area too but nothing is stopping you from putting one in your fake hall too.

Living Room

  1. Put a couch in the corner of the room or a large armchair or even just a big mattress with one of the horizontal sides propped up on the wall. Get a throw pillow or cushion and put it on the armrest of your sofa, armchair or propped up mattress.
  2. Put a coffee table in front of the couch. You can put whatever you want on this table, such as magazines or a bowl of fruit.
  3. Try to get a small TV for your living room. Add a DVD, VCR or Blu Ray player.
  4. Put a small waste can next to your couch for any garbage. You need a place to put rubbish, you don't want your room that looks like an apartment to get messy.

Bedroom

  1. Put your bed in a corner of the room. Make sure it is neatly made and has fresh bed clothes that match the colour scheme of your 'apartment'.
  2. Add a wardrobe and a chest of drawers for your clothing. If you have a built in wardrobe, you can keep using that, or, use that space as a different area of your apartment and add a free standing wardrobe.
  3. Add a nightstand to your room, by the bed. You can place on it your alarm clock and maybe a lamp for reading in bed. Also keep this aiming toward to color scheme. Add a small bookcase for some of your favorite books, alternatively, you could put your bookcase in your lounge area, next to the propped up mattress.

Kitchen

  1. Add table and some chairs. Four chairs might be over the top, one will probably suffice. You can use beanbags and a small table, if you prefer.
  2. Add a mini fridge and a kitchen cart. Buy a toaster or borrow one from elsewhere in the house. If you're allowed, and it's not a fire risk, put a microwave in your kitchen area. This will make cooking and preparing food easier in your bedroom.
  3. Get plates, bowls and cutlery for your mini kitchen and something to store them in.

Bathroom

  1. Get a basin, a table and your bathroom supplies. You may not be able to plumb in a basin. A large bowl might have to suffice which you'll need to fill from the nearest tap, or you could put a pitcher a washbowl set in the bathroom area of your room.
    • This is more for washing than doing business, whatever business you might want to do. Make sure you can clean yourself, your dishes and your clothes in this if you want or need to.
  2. Put the basin on a table. Put a mirror on the wall behind the table with a basin on it.
  3. Use the other table space for towels, toothbrushes etc.

Laundry room

  1. Create a laundry room. You can just put a basket and clothes rack in whatever space is not taken up already by your other rooms.
  2. Put the clothes rack beside your basket.
  3. Be sure to label your basket so people don't put rubbish in your basket.

Study

  1. Manoeuvre a desk into your room. You can also added a bookcase if you would like to and there isn't one already place in your bedroom or lounge area.
  2. If you have a laptop or computer, put it on the desk. If not use a drawing pad or notebook instead of a computer or laptop.
  3. Add pencil holders, paper, desk ornaments etc to your desk.

Toy Room

  1. Place some storage boxes and an armchair in the room. A table will work well too.
  2. Gather all your toys and sort them out. Place figurines in one drawer and play-doh in the other drawer of whatever item of furniture you have that has drawers. If you have other toys, you can do whatever you like with them when you are making your look like an apartment.
  3. Arrange your toys in your toy room. Keep them neat and tidy though!

Pet Area

  1. If you have as pet, create a pet area. Add a pet bed or create a place where your pet could sleep.
  2. Feed your pet in your room. You'll need an appropriate bowl and some pet food and water.
  3. Have newspapers or a litterbox handy. You don't want your room to be messy.
  4. If you have a small caged pet or fish in a tank, just put its cage or tank on another table in your room.

Garden

  1. Create a garden area inside your room. Few apartments have gardens but you can simulate a garden area in your room. Add a window box or ask for a small space of land outside your window or if you have a balcony that would work. Fence the area if you want. Measure the window box(es) or land you have.
  2. Window box steps
    • Paint your window box with bright paint.
    • Plant some vegetables.
    • Plant all different flowers.
    • Repeat some or all steps if there is more than one window box.
  3. Small area steps.
    • Plant flowers and get a deck chair or bench.
    • Put up a bird house and bird feeder if you want.
    • Try putting up a small washing line to dry clothes.
    • Get garden toys such as a hula hoop, small paddling pool, a ball etc.
  4. Balcony steps.
    • Get some potted plants.
    • Get two chairs and a table.
    • Consider putting up a small washing line on your balcony to dry clothes.

Tips

  • Reuse items you already have to save money.
  • Get a laundry basket for outside your room.
  • Have a bottle of cold water and a cup in you're bathroom space for brushing your teeth,if you don't have an En-Suite.
  • Make outside your bedroom look like a front door.
  • Add ornaments to your bedroom. It will make your bedroom look like an apartment. Paintings will also work.
  • Use your wardrobe to store excess items. It would be good if your wardrobe isn't permanently in one place in your room.
  • Get a DVD player if you are allowed. It would be good for when friends come over.
  • An En-Suite would be perfect as a bathroom, because it is one.

Warnings

  • Don't cook things in your room without permission from your parents.
  • Have permission.
  • You will have to clean everything.

Things You'll Need

  • Furniture

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