Minimalist apartment ideas for a simple living and lovely home decor

Looking for minimalist apartment ideas? There are quite a few in this article. Let’s dive in.

Clutter is one of the most depressing things to fill your apartment with.

Stacks of mail, shoes, empty cups, sunglasses, and all manner of objects can easily end up laying haphazardly around your home. Surfaces are easy to crowd without thought, especially if your apartment is full of busy people rushing around.

There are a lot of downsides to a cluttered apartment. For one thing, it’s not the best look. Attempts at decorating are hidden under all the mess. Items out actually value don’t stand out at all.

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It also makes it all too easy to lose your keys, your phone, your shoes, and anything else you actually need. Taken all together, a cluttered home is outright depressing.

Minimalist décor is one of the most effective ways to combat this kind of clutter. In a minimalist apartment, it’s much easier to see what is and isn’t supposed to be somewhere.

Image source: Stafford Bensen

Properly organized minimalist apartments promote simple living and offer everything a place where it should go.

If you’re looking into learning how to simplify your life and create a minimalist home, know that it’s going to be a gradual process. You need to not only clear away the clutter but also learn how to break some bad habits.

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Take the time to look at spaces every once and awhile to see what should and should not be there. This should be a consistent process throughout your apartment.

Some people think that learning how to be a minimalist means stripping out all personality and fun for your home, which scares them away. This isn’t the case!

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Minimalist decorating is a matter of refocusing the spaces in your home to what’s actually important. A minimalist room still feels very much lived in, but it’s not cluttered with items. Here are some great minimalist apartment ideas to help you clear out the clutter in your home.

What Are the Benefits of Minimalist Apartment Décor?

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• It’s less stressful. Clutter is visually distracting. Everything we see catches our attention at least a little. If there’s less clutter, there’s less visual stress. Minimalist home décor is soothing.
• It’s more appealing. Have you ever seen a photo of a home in a décor magazine or a video of a home during a décor television show that looks cluttered? They’re always minimalistic. The beauty of the furniture and decorations are allowed to stand out. Minimalist decorating makes an apartment much better looking and allows you to make the most use of your decorating choices.

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• It’s easier to clean. Cleaning up a bunch of random objects scattered everywhere is a nightmare. You have to move stuff around or clean around it, which means the room is less clean. It takes longer to sort through what is trash and what isn’t trash. An empty room is much easier to clean than one with 30 things in it, right? Less stuff in a space makes it much easier to clean.

What Does a Minimalist Apartment Look Like?

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• It has minimal furniture. A minimalist room sticks to the essentials. Only furniture you need in the room stays there. In a minimalist living room, for instance, there would only be a couch, a chair or love seat, a coffee table, a simple entertainment stand, a television, and maybe a few lamps. You could easily reduce the furniture from there, if you wanted, sticking to just a couch, chair, and coffee table. A minimalist bedroom can be as simple as a room with just a mattress, a nightstand, and a dresser. A lack of large furniture items or many small ones simplifies the space and allows the space to be more functional.
• It has clear surfaces. Flat surfaces in a minimalist home are clear except for a few decorations. They don’t accumulate items. Even mail shouldn’t be allowed to sit for long. There shouldn’t be a lot of random items or stacks of papers. This will be much more soothing and easy on the eyes

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• It has well-chosen accent decorations. A home that is devoid of everything is boring and cold. Decorate with items that you really like and mean something to you. Have a vase full of lovely flowers on your coffee table, or place a picture of your family on your mostly empty desk. Put tasteful art on your mostly empty walls.
• It focuses more on quality over quantity. A minimalist apartment isn’t full of cheap stuff, but what it does have is very nice. Choose furniture and décor that you really like and is of high quality. One very nice desk is much better than 5 pieces of pressboard furniture. This also allows you to showcase any unique pieces of furniture that you have.

How to Create a Minimalist Apartment

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• Focus on one room at a time. Simplifying the whole place at once can be very difficult, especially if you have a major problem with clutter. Concentrate on one room. If turning your home into a minimalist one seems overwhelming, start with the room that seems the least difficult to clear out. This will help inspire you to move onto more difficult spaces. This isn’t going to work as well in a place you’re just moving into, but you can apply the same sort of mentality as you unpack. Move room to room as best you can.
• Begin with furniture. Furniture is going to be the biggest thing in any room. That’s the place you should start. Keep pieces of furniture to as few as reasonably possible. What can be removed without sacrificing comfort or usefulness of the room? Try to stick with plain simple furniture in solid and subdued colors. If you have (or want to buy) a particular more elaborate piece, this simple furniture should accent it and not distract from it. Take it as an opportunity to highlight what makes that piece of unique and lovable.

Image source: Dan Kitchens Australia

• Keep only the essentials. When you’re evaluating whether or not to leave something in the room, ask whether or not it’s really essential. If you can do just fine without it, get rid of it. Strip the room down to its essentials. Decide if something is useful or it really has meaning or appeal to you. If it does, keep it in. If it doesn’t, set it aside. You can add things back in later if it is too bare when you finish.
• Clear your floors. Floors should be clear except for furniture. Don’t treat them as storage spaces. Things shouldn’t be stacked on the floor. Once you’ve gotten your furniture down to what you really need, clear away the floor. Put rugs up until you’re done. It may not fit into your minimalist design well once you’re done.

Image source: Amos Goldreich Architecture

• Clear off all surfaces. You shouldn’t; have anything on your counters, tables, and chairs. Tables and counters should end up with one or two simple decorations you really like at most. Everything else should be thrown away, donated, or trashed. Flat surfaces tend to accumulate things as we go through our lives and clearing them is going to make your apartment much better looking.
• Clear the walls. Some of us like to hang a lot of stuff on our walls. This doesn’t work in minimalist décor. Keep nice, simple pieces as wall décor, but don’t turn your walls into a wild mess that looks like a college dorm hallway corkboard.

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• Store items out of sight. If there are things you want to keep but don’t want to keep out in plain sight, store them somewhere out of sight. Put them in drawers or cabinets. Keep them organized for when you want to find them again and to keep them from becoming hidden There are a lot of smart organization tools at home décor and home improvement stores.
• Declutter your storage areas. If you want a truly minimalist home, your cabinets and drawers need to be cleaned out, too, especially if you want to use them to store other items. It’s often easier to do this after you’ve cleaned out the parts of the room you’ve seen. Hiding clutter isn’t much more helpful than having it everywhere in the open. Hidden clutter also has a tendency to eventually spill out of the places it’s been hidden.
• Make sure your artwork is simple. Art is still important for a minimalist room. It keeps the space from being boring. It should be quality but simple artwork that you really like. Something like a framed Space Image on your wall might give your room a cosmic feel. The frame should also be simple and subdued.

Image source: TLA Studio

• Keep decorations simple. One or two decorations as accents make the minimalist room much more welcoming. Vases of flowers or potted plants are great choices. They can add bright splashes of colors to rooms that are more subdued and neutral. This added color and energy may be just the touch your room needs to keep it from being too cold and unwelcoming.
• Use plain window treatments or keep the windows bare. Keep curtains simple and solid color. Nice wooden blinds area great choice for privacy and energy efficiency. Ornate window dressings become clutter—clutter that is hard to dust and to remember to dust.
• Stick to plain patterns. Solid colors make for the nest rugs, furniture, and any accents you have. More complex patterns like flowers or plaid, create visual clutter.

Image source: L. Weatherbee Design Studio

• Stick to subdued colors. Most of the room should use simple and toned-down colors. White is a traditional minimalist color, but almost any more neutral-toned solid color will work. You don’t want to stress anyone’s eyes. Earth tones are good choice that are both subdued and retain a bit of personality. Try blues, greens, tans, and browns.
• Continue to minimize. Keep coming back to the room to see if it’s really as simplified as possible. What else can you get rid of? Can you store something out of sight somewhere else? Come back for a few days even after you’re done and check monthly to see if the minimalistic look is still intact and still working well.
• Remember the old saying “a place for everything and everything in its place”. This is one of the great appeals of minimalist décor. You should be able to easily find everything in the room. Your keys should have a spot where they belong and stay. So should your shoes and your wallet. This makes life much easier. No more worrying about being later because you’ve misplaced your keys or your phone!
• Relax and enjoy it. Turning your apartment into a minimalist one is tiring, but once it’s done, take the time to look around and enjoy it. It’s the reward and purpose of all your hard work.

Maintaining Your Minimalist Décor

Image source: Haptic Architects

A minimalist apartment is something built through force of habit. Otherwise, you’re just cleaning it out and rearranging it. Here are some tips to help maintain the minimalist look in your home.

• Use the “one in, one out” rule. If you get something new, select something else to remove. This will prevent you from steadily accumulating new clutter. It’s the best way to replace old, less nice items with new quality ones.
• Regularly clear off surfaces. It’s easy to set down mail, or bags, or books on tables and counters while you’re going about your life and never moving them. Whenever you clean the room, take the time to clear these items away and put them where they belong, whether that’s a drawer, a file cabinet, or the trash.
• Use chairs only as places to sit. Chairs can easily become another kind of table for you to set things. Break yourself of this habit early on to avoid creating another cluttered space. It’s also easy to forget to clear away stuff that ends up on a chair you don’t use much. It makes more sense for things to never end up there. Make a new rule in your apartment: chairs are only for sitting.

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Ending thoughts on these minimalist apartment ideas

A minimalist apartment will make your life much better. It will transform your home from another stressful environment to a soothing refuge. It can take a lot of work, but simplifying your life is well worth it!

If you liked this article with minimalist apartment ideas, you should check out these as well:

• Minimalist And Practical Modern Kitchen Cabinets
• Minimalist Living Rooms Examples