There comes a time in everyone's life where you take the big step of moving out on one's own. In just a few weeks I'll be taking the plunge and moving from suburban Atlanta to lovely Cambridge, Massachusetts for graduate school. I've already got my apartment chosen, it's in a new beautiful ultramodern building right on the Charles River.
While I'm definitely excited and ready to move, there are of course some design faults to over come in my new space. My apartment is a very small studio, which means I need to figure out how to make one room into my bedroom, office, living room, dining room, and also a second bedroom for when my friends come to visit. The key to making this all work is bringing only the essentials, being creative with storage, and getting furniture that is properly scaled for a smaller space. I'm also thankful that there are so many great interior design blogs out there to give my ideas on how to make this the most out of my new apartment. Today I found Apartment Therapy's "Smallest Coolest Spaces" 2007 contest which have been especially helpful in showing that you don't need to compromise style to have a functional space. I love
Laura's California studio, especially since there are elements of her floor plan that are similar to mine so I consider her apartment design to be my Rosetta Stone of sorts for studio apartments. Some modifications (like painting) won't be an option for me, but I'm just thankful that there are so many great resources available to give me ideas on what to do with my new space. I'm trying to look at this small space as just an opportunity to be extra creative!
Another great source for ideas has been the LiveJournal community
Saucy Dwellings. By using their "studio" and "small space" tags I was able to browse several studio apartments. These two in particular stood out to me because of their genius usage of space to create something very special and unique that definitely reflects their personal tastes and interests.
I'll be pulling ideas from other places like
Plush Palate,
Coco+Kelley,
Elements of Style,
Small Place Style,
Door Sixteen, the stacks of
Domino,
ELLEDecor, and
Architectural Digest my mom has saved from over the years, and of course getting advice from our own DIY guru,
Taylor to get some more definitive ideas of what I want to do in my place. Any suggestions or tips are more than welcome!
