When it comes to decorating your house, apartment or even just one room there are some simple Do’s and Don’ts that you should follow to make the process easier and the make the decoration effort a success.  I will try to cut these down to a simple list of “Do’s”.

1. Do Sketch your Floorplan

Take some measurements and do a rough sketch of your room plan.  This should include windows, electrical outlets, and special features that will remain in the room, etc.  When going shopping for materials, furniture, etc take this with you, which will take the guess work out of the actual dimensions of things.  You can draw this up at 1:100, which I know sounds daunting, but that just means that 1cm equals 1 metre, which means you can use a standard ruler for this.

2. Do Some Research

Personal style doesn’t stop at what you choose to wear each day.  It also extends to what your living space looks like.  Take the time to look around, look at magazines, go to furniture stores and see if there is a specific style, colour, furniture type that you like.

Most of us are renters, so we don’t have the luxury of actually renovating our homes into something special, but there are some ways that you change your surrounds to be more Eco-Friendly.  First I guess I should go a few paces back and explain what Eco-Friendly is and why it is good for you.

Eco-Friendly seems to be all the rage these days to save our planet, but there are other reasons why this is a great thing to adapt to your home and that is yours and your family’s health.  Have you ever lived in a place in Shanghai where there is a lot of wood paneling scattered around and maybe you always felt a bit under the weather, but couldn’t quite figure out why.  All products in your house are slowly (or some, not so slowly) releasing emissions that you are breathing in and when I say all I mean all.  Furniture, paints, cleaning products, timber, plants, etc all emit VOC’s (Volatile organic compounds).  The reason for mentioning the timber paneling is because I have actually heard of cases in Shanghai where the tenants have become sick because the products used to treat the wood were emitting too much Formaldehyde.  That is why a lot of Chinese people will renovate and not move in for months, but you could seriously reduce these emissions by choosing the right materials.

There are so many tiny apartments in Shanghai and if you are not one of those lucky few who swan around in their 150 sqm plus apartments you may be feeling a little squeezed in.  I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that we are not in places like Japan or even the fabulous Hong Kong where space is a luxury.  There are many tricks that you can utilize to make that space that you spend a huge portion of your life in feel bigger.

You can use many tricks to make your space feel larger like colour, furniture placement, lighting and different materials.  I will give you some simple tips that will make a world of difference to what is feeling like a cramped space.

1. Less is More

One of the sure fire ways to make a space feel not only cramped, but messy is having clutter laying around the place.  Try and work out spaces to hide things, this could be as simple as buying a nice looking box from IKEA to put things in instead of leaving them sitting all over the shelves.  This works well for all those little items you never know what to do with when moving.  I am very brutal and usually throw this stuff out, but if you are not that way inclined then get some nice matching boxes to put on the shelves and hide the stuff away.  You will be surprised how much more orderly and spacious your place will feel after this small step.