10 tips how to make your apartment a comfortable, stylish and functional

1. Zoniruem large space

Total fashion free layout, studio apartments and combined kitchen-dining room has its pitfalls. Any architect will tell you that simply is not enough to demolish the wall. Not divided into subzones a large area very soon may begin to oppress. Remove the partitions between rooms, combine them with corridors and kitchen - and you get a completely new room, where, as soon as you find you do not like to live. Why? Because purely psychologically, we need a few different places for different classes.

We need to have separate, though conventionally delimited area where we could sit quietly and eat without feeling behind twenty meters of empty space that was nook where we could be alone with a book, and so on.

The first rule of planning open space - at least visually separate zones of different functional purpose - cooking, eating, watching TV, work, recreation, communication ... This can be done with:

a) different textures of sex;
b) the drop height of the ceiling or arches between the kitchen and living area;
c) multiple columns;
d) a light curtain (usually more brightly lighted dining room and kitchen is located in semi-darkness, illuminated only where the working surfaces);
d) "the bar" or some other interior items, acting as a barrier.

2. Expel smells, the sounds cuts

Studio - it's certainly great, but there is one thing. " When we cook, we have burnt burgers, milk runs, etc. The situation - as in advertising, only the exact opposite: "And the smell!" That smell! .. " We have something with you - well, aired - and forgotten. A upholstered furniture? And the carpets? And the drapes? Fabrics absorb smells like a sponge. If you often cook at home, make a sliding partition between the kitchen and living area - at any time, the kitchen can be cut off. Besides wall - it sounds screen.

3. Furnishes spacious rooms

In very large rooms should not be to arrange furniture exclusively on the perimeter.

Why do you want the room resembled an army parade or dance class? Fill the center can "lunch group" or just a guest sofa.

4. "Expands" a small room

You have a typical apartment with a tiny kitchen and not very spacious rooms? Visually, the space can be increased through: a) longitudinal direction floorboards or parquet pattern;
b) doors with glass, mirrored wings-in closets and simply mirrors;
c) the dispersed light.

The conventional wisdom is that the light colors to visually expand the room. But in very small rooms, for example, 8 kV. m, white wallpaper will not solve the problem. On the contrary, many small bright room are depressing, causing the association with an outpatient facility or toilet.

Small room is better to make bright as the casket.

And if you're afraid of color "overloading", leave one wall light and monochrome.

5. "Lift" ceiling

If you want to visually increase the height of the ceiling, you can make it a different level, for example, in the corridors below, and the rooms above. Undervalued ceiling at the entrance of the room creates the illusion of higher ceilings in the residential part of the apartment.

Another way to visually "raise" the ceiling - to choose wallpaper with upright walking pattern - for example, in the classic strip.

6. Repeat elements

If you are in the interior plastic elements - arches, curved walls, curved walkways or rack, be sure somewhere repeat these lines again. The golden rule interior designer: all the expressive details must find an echo in the neighboring, simultaneously view elements.

But do not build too many arches - you still modern apartment, rather than palatial suite.

7. Select doors and windows

If you like sliding doors - choose the coupe two guides, top and bottom. Door with one upper anchorage is very unstable: the slightest draft - and she "walks". With a coupe you now and then you wake up at night from the opposite chatter.

Whatever you choose, all the doors, which can be seen at the same time, should be in the same style.

"Door discord" very spoils the overall impression.

The same applies to the windows. By the way, best seen with symmetrical sash windows - you should not strive for the asymmetry of the windows where you can avoid it.

8. What is not worth doing in the kitchen

Kitchen is an arena where you can watch the "unity and struggle of the" three opposites - stoves, washers and refrigerators. Each of these elements must have a modicum of personal space, but in the same time, they do not have to defend far from each other. And do not place among the obstacles impeding the move - it will create in your kitchen a source of constant irritation (that is, a common cause of "kitchen" family quarrels!).

If you decide to put in a kitchen suite with a separate "islands", plan your his place so that all four sides were aisles not less than one meter - otherwise they will be difficult to use and you are guaranteed another source of irritation.

Kitchen walls can close the so-called kitchen "aprons.

This advice is relevant, especially for older homes, which are often visited by utilities - to change the wiring, batteries, gas pipe ... When installing the kitchen units are not hermetically sealed access to the most communication. Keep in mind that rent virgin "apron" made of plastic is much easier than breaking tile.

9. So whether you need a podium?

This seems to be a beautiful thing, as the podium, often turns into a dislocated joints and broken children's knees. Many people who arranged their own homes "step", complaining that it was very uncomfortable.

If possible zonirovat space otherwise, sex is best left without extremes.

Moreover, higher than the floor, the ceiling below. And, accordingly, the air is so valuable in urban areas, less.

10. We fight the floods

Do not lift the floor in the bathroom and toilet rooms: water tends to flow downward. And if in your absence, God forbid, burst pipe or tap may suffer parquet flooring, laminated flooring, furniture, neighbors below ... To prevent this problem is easier than to solve it: make a small threshold of. If a small accident (for example, flowed valve), and the seams around the perimeter of a hermetically sealed, a "reservoir" filled no earlier than 12 hours, but man comes into the tub, on average every 4 - 6 hours, so it is likely before the flood will not come.

And finally: do not forget that the toilet is not just you.

If you started a re-planning, ensure that the bedroom was not close to a neighbor's bathroom. Noise flushing will be for you is hardly the most pleasant melody. Although one friend of mine, I remember, consoled himself with the fact that this is the most alive "natural" sound among the industrial urban noise.