How to Decorate a Small Apartment Yourself: Real Example

It's not easy living in a small apartment with one other person. For example, when getting ready for work in the morning, you have to navigate carefully to avoid bumping into each other in the narrow hallway. These aren't just assumptions, but words from Christina, the owner of this 35-square-meter flat.

The young woman moved here with her boyfriend two years ago. Initially, the new place was a studio, but the couple quickly decided to reconfigure it. The space was divided into a kitchen-living room and bedroom. According to Christina, the apartment immediately felt more spacious.

Since interior design is connected to both her work and hobby, she handled the apartment’s decoration herself. Christina is a PR manager and influencer for a company that manufactures textiles and furniture accessories for IKEA, so it was easy to find inspiration on Pinterest or Instagram or hunt for vintage finds right at work.

It should be said that Christina treats vintage items with special reverence. After moving, she discovered that the new neighborhood is full of cozy cafes, parks, and antique shops. In one of them, Christina found a vintage wooden table with chrome legs and a marble insert on the top.

"I walked past the window display where this table was staring at me and I sighed: it was so expensive!" - recalls the girl. - "Then it disappeared. I was ready to cry, but it turned out they just rearranged the shop. A while later my boyfriend bought it for me as a birthday gift."

The interior is in a modern Scandinavian style, but with vintage details. It's a bit like other Swedish apartments and yet individual.

"In Sweden, it's dark for eight months of the year," says Christina. "So the best solution for a home in such a region is cozy textile layers of different textures, lots of greenery and candles in stylish candleholders."

Some tricks she learned from the apartment of Australian designer Amanda Henderson. These include open bookshelves, woven baskets, and family heirlooms received from her grandparents, as well as simple wooden furniture and even a DIY chest of drawers.

Christina says that the chest of drawers was very ordinary and didn’t quite fit into the interior. "Back then, I painted it graphite gray to match the kitchen and added vintage handles. I'm very proud of this chest of drawers and now ready for any redesigns!"