I recently moved into a house on my college campus that has very dark finishes and not a ton of natural light. My roommates and I decided we needed to make it a brighter, happier space to motivate our active lifestyles. Today, I’m going to show you how we turned our dark college home into a fun space.
First off, we couldn't paint anything because we're just renting the house for a year. I recommend buying a peel and stick wallpaper to put on an accent wall to make the space more fun. The one below I found on Pinterest, and you can get more neutral, simple ones on Amazon for cheap. Also, abstract art is an easy way to make a space more modern and bright.
For our living room, we repurposed one of my roommate’s old sectionals their parents were getting rid of. It’s a light beige so it contrasts with the dark wood floors. I recommend getting all light furniture. We got this huge rug to go under the sectional and it’s very colorful. The colors in the rug can also be seen on a pink velvet accent chair we have in our living room, too. Make sure every color used in a space is tied into somewhere so it feels balanced and unified
Our dining room and living room are all one big area, so we kept the dining area simple since the living room was more colorful. The wooden dining table was a lighter wood shade than the floors. So, we use my parent’s old white knit rug. When you have contrasting wood tones with furniture, make sure you have a rug under the table or whatever you’re putting on the floor. The white rug also separates our dining area from the living room because it contrasts with the dark floor. For the dining chairs, we got two colored end chairs and four acrylic chairs. The blue chairs tie into the rug in the living room.
A huge thing you can do to make a space newer is get a new light fixture. It makes a huge difference when you replace the basic dome lamps above the dining tables with a cool light fixture. We replaced ours with a similar gold fixture, and it made the space extremely brighter and more modern.
My last tip is to add greenery or potted plants wherever you can. Plants can brighten up the energy in a space and make it more calming.
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