I’m graduating university in a couple of months, which means I’m finally moving out of my student house. Over the past 3 years I’ve lived here, I’ve collected an eclectic mix of decorations. I get a good laugh out of the beer-boxes-made collage on my living room wall, or the Queen’s mascot sign my roommate found on the side of the road. Every piece brings back a fond memory.
Post-graduation, I’ll get my first real job, and maybe I’ll host real dinner parties, at my first real apartment. When I envision this near-future, I don’t see the leftover glitter streamers from my roommate’s disco birthday party in the backdrop. While they can still be fun, my interior design choices have to match the maturity level I’m trying to embody. Here are my top 5 tips for levelling up your post-grad room décor:
1. Frame your posters and photos
Blue sticky tack is not gonna cut it anymore. You can keep the Pink Floyd album cover you bought at the poster sale as a frosh, or the film you got developed from spring break, but put some intention into how you display them. Framing your posters and photos makes a world of difference on your walls, especially if you pick frames that match your personal style.
2. Ditch your LEDS for a Colourful Lamp
Colourful lights are fun and great for setting a mood, but the strip of Amazon LEDs peeling the paint off your ceiling look awful. Adding a colour changing light bulb to a lamp to get the same effect—with an upgrade. Phillips makes one that’s $14.99, and can be controlled from an app on your phone! Not to mention, you can still set it to plain white or yellow for day-to-day ambience.
3. Ditch the fake plants
The plastic vines hanging around your room are not fooling anyone. The effort it takes to maintain a living thing in your home is a sign of maturity. Even if all you can handle is a couple succulents that require water once a month, it’s still preferable to the shiny polyurethane fern you never took out of its original pot. A few well-kept plants around the house will liven up your space in a grown-up way.
4. Matching dish wear
The beer steins you stole from the bars over the past 4 years are not a good dinner party look. You can do the eclectic thing tastefully if you really put thought into it. But I think the easiest way to give the impression that you have your life together is to grab a matching dish set from Goodwill. NOTE: this does not apply to mugs. The more weird mugs the merrier!
5. No flags, jerseys, or (borrowed) street signs
Nothing screams “I’m in a fraternity” more than a Saturdays Are For The Boys flag, a Miami Heat jersey pinned directly into the drywall, or a street sign that mysteriously found its way indoors. I was trying to find a way to elevate these items, but in all honestly they just need to go. Flags belong on a pole, clothes belong in your closet, and signs belong on the street. End of story.