Creating the right look for your apartment offers a chance to imprint your personality on your dwelling. Everyone wants the place they call home to feel like home. If you rent an apartment, landlords are hesitant to let you do extensive remodeling. One thing you can control is the decor and style.

You can make plenty of large and small decor changes to fit your personal taste. Here are some ideas to consider for your next apartment redecorating project:

Reinvent Your Furniture

Furniture forms crucial focal points in an apartment. The last thing you want to do is plop an old sofa against the wall and call it good. You can make your living space feel larger through your furniture arrangements. One idea is to float your sofa in the middle of the living room and mount your TV on the wall facing the sofa. It will open up floor space behind the sofa and under the TV. Another idea is to make a small dining area feel larger by using a glass table top and clear chairs to visually expand space.

Touching up the furniture’s appearance is also a stylish choice. You can paint an end table, kitchen chairs or your bed frame in colors that compliment the existing colors found on the walls and the carpet. You can also spruce up an old sofa with decorative throw pillows or colorful sofa cushion covers.

Decorate the Walls

A bare wall can make a room feel dull and boring. There is no reason you should let that space go to waste. A wall can become a living canvas for all sorts of stylish decor ideas.

Floating shelves can be staggered on the wall and used to display an assortment of collectables from statues to figurines. The best part is that the displays can be rotated to change up your décor when the mood hits.

Decorating the walls with your favorite paintings and photographs is a fun style option. Frame your favorite photos inside large mats and cover the walls with these photographs and framed paintings, drawings or other artwork. It will turn a room into a personal art gallery and offer conversation pieces with guests.

Invite More Light

Nothing transforms a room as quickly as light. Allowing in extra sunlight is an obvious solution during the daylight hours. For other times when natural lighting is not available, you should invest in lamps of all shapes and sizes.

Lamps are a great solution for bringing good lighting into a room. They can be placed on end tables, side tables and night stands and add a nice decorative touch to those pieces of furniture. You can also use floor lamps to illuminate dark corners in your bedroom or living room.

Hide Your Storage

Open space is a rare thing in small apartments. You need to do everything possible to create the illusion of space. That does not simply involve throwing out clutter. It also means finding clever ways to store items and then disguise the storage.

Bookshelves offer a great method for storing necessary items in a classy way. You can use one large bookshelf to store books on the top shelves, dishes on the middle shelves and the lower shelves can be replaced with bins or drawers to hold blankets, linens, office supplies or other things that take up space. Another idea is to flank a pair of bookshelves, one on each side of an entry way, to create the illusion of having built in shelves like you would find in a vintage apartment.

What are your favorite style tips for your apartment?