If You Missed It: 10 Most Popular Posts of May

As tradition dictates, we summarize the month and share our top 10 most-read posts. In May, articles about small apartment design and Khrushchyovka (Soviet-era housing) attracted special interest, along with tips on organizing garden plots and ideas for kitchen decoration.

1. How Our Small Apartments Differ from European Ones
We often say phrases like "European-level housing" without even thinking about what key differences exist between our apartments and those in the West. We decided to set aside preconceptions about "it's better where you're not" and explore this topic more deeply.

Continue readingDesign: BeInDesign

2. What You Can Do with a Khrushchyovka: 5 Examples
What inheritance are we giving up? Is it necessary to abandon it? Take a look at what can be done with an apartment in a Khrushchyovka-era building.

See examplesDesign: Olga Kulikovskaya-Eshbi

3. Items That Are Not Forbidden to Change in Kitchen Layout
Kitchen reconfiguration is one of the most requested interior design tasks during a design project. Apartment owners not only want to expand tiny kitchens in standard five-story buildings but also change the layout of walls in more spacious 9- and 11-meter kitchens. Sometimes such reconfigurations still involve various violations. Together with designer and studio director "Cozy Apartment" Natalia Preobrazhenskaya, we explain what can actually be done with your kitchen.

Continue readingDesign: "Cozy Apartment"

4. IKEA New Arrivals for Small Apartments
We constantly write about small apartment design and, of course, could not ignore new IKEA products created by designers for our standard apartments. Let's see what’s new?

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5. How to Achieve a Beautiful Renovation in a Standard Two-Room Apartment
The clients—a young family without children but with a cat—wanted to create a more creative atmosphere in their apartment. They also had to incorporate their existing art collection. Thus, designer Natalia Komova decided that a play of shades would be the key element of the interior—and she was right.

Continue readingDesign: Natalia Komova

6. How to Decorate a Small Apartment: 10 Vibrant Examples
You can turn one room into two and set up a kitchen, dining area, and bedroom on just 15 square meters. Let’s look at techniques that help change space.

Continue readingDesign: UD Base

7. How to Decorate Garden Beds: Tips and Ideas from Professionals
Creating a vegetable garden on a dacha plot is an appealing idea for city dwellers. How to make beds that don’t spoil the garden view and even enhance it, we learned from landscape designer Irina Lukyanova.

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8. A New Pavilion for an Old Dacha: Real Example
On a picturesque plot of a 1940s suburban dacha, one thing was missing—a good pavilion. An architect and "Fazenda" were not hindered by the uneven plot or lush garden. The latter, by the way, was preserved.

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9. How to Protect Your Apartment from the Sun: 8 Examples
Everything depends on how you feel about sunlight: do you like waking up to rays shining directly on your face, or would you rather open your eyes in the dark even if it’s a bright summer day outside? Even if you're a devoted sun-worshipper, you’ll need one of the ways to shield your home from the intense heat of the sun in summer.

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10. Not Just Tiles: 9 Ideas for Kitchen Backsplash Decoration
Who said tiles are the only material for kitchen backsplashes? Russian designers vividly demonstrate that there are worthy, stylish, and practical alternatives. We’ve gathered 9 ideas and 23 examples proving that replacing familiar (and quite tedious!) tiles is definitely possible.

Continue readingDesign: Anna Clark