Don’t Make These 7 Mistakes When Decorating Your Senior Apartment
Are you ready to refresh your design style when you move into your new senior apartment home? Even if you’re bringing a lot of your current furniture and decor with you, it’s tough to get started personalizing your space.
While retirement is the perfect time to show off your style and personality, there are still design mistakes that can affect how your favorite décor looks in your home. Use these seven tips to avoid design disasters and get a fresh take on decorating your senior living apartment.
1. Not starting with the downsizing process
It’s tempting to skip to the fun part of moving into a senior apartment, and pick out new items for your next chapter. However, it’s important to thoroughly go through the downsizing and decluttering process in your current home.
Choosing the most important items in your current home and getting rid of the rest can give you a blank slate for design in your new apartment. After you’ve gone through the downsizing process, double-check the details of your floor plan to get inspired on how to decorate your new space.
2. Underestimating natural light
You can choose the perfect design elements for your apartment, but décor can fall flat when you don’t take advantage of natural light. Though both artificial lighting and natural lighting help create the illusion of space, only natural light can highlight colors without altering their hues.
To maximize natural light and add a touch of style to your apartment, choose sheer curtains, rather than heavy drapes in living areas, and consider decorating with strategically placed mirrors to reflect more natural light in your home.
One of our most affordable one-bedroom senior apartment homes, the Brighton, features large windows that fill the space with natural light and a charming balcony that frames picturesque views of the Salt Lake Valley and surrounding mountains.
3. Crowding surfaces and filling every room with furniture
It’s impossible to make any space feel larger when every room is filled with furniture and each surface is crowded with items. You can maximize your visual space by only including furniture you’ll actually use in your apartment, reducing the number of items you have on display, and placing things you often use in cabinets or bins to keep your space decluttered.
The Wilmington floor plan at Summit Vista boasts a master bath with a double vanity, and the Victoria and Hawthorn floor plans include master baths with dual countertop sinks. This makes them perfect for small stackable bins and baskets to store certain items easily within reach for convenience, like shaving supplies, extra hand towels or cosmetics.
4. Choosing the wrong bed
Choosing a bed that’s too big can be a design mistake when decorating a new apartment, because it leaves little room for you to move around. The one- and two-bedroom senior apartment homes at Summit Vista are designed to feel spacious and commodious. Many of our floor plans, like the Wilmington and Rochester, can comfortably fit a queen bed in the master bedrooms with space to spare.
Another notable design mistake in the bedroom is choosing a bed that’s the wrong height. A bed that’s too high can make your bedroom feel top-heavy; a bed that’s too low can make it seem like the floor is cluttered. And beds that are either too low or too high present common fall hazards. The right bed depends on your height, but experts typically agree that beds should be between 20 and 25 inches off the ground.
5. Pushing all the furniture against the walls
When you add couches, dressers, end tables and other furniture to a small space, your instinct might be to push everything against the wall. Sometimes that works if a space is especially small, but it often leads to open spaces that feel boring and uninviting.
Floating your furniture around the room can actually make it feel more cozy and create interest. Grouping furniture in front of a focal point, like gorgeous views of the Salt Lake Valley from your window at Summit Vista, is a great way to get guests to gather and strike up a conversation.
6. Missing the opportunity to add plants
Healthy indoor plants have an array of colors and fragrances that can add unique layers to your design, while also providing you with valuable mental health benefits.
Think about decorating your senior apartment with bright green palms, interesting vases with fresh flowers, hanging plants placed and draped over shelves, or making living art with a plant wall.
Our senior living community features a community garden where residents can show off their green thumb. You can fill vases with bouquets of fresh flowers you grew yourself, or grow herbs and vegetables for our culinary team to use for menu items at the Broadfork Bistro and Olympus Room.
7. Not showing off your personality
Keeping your senior apartment clutter-free doesn’t mean you can’t show off your personality through design. It’s good to get inspired by what other residents are doing in their apartments or the latest design trends, but it’s also important to give your home character. Think about adding a comfortable armchair with a fun pattern, funky piece of wall art, or colorful throw pillows to your apartment.
Summit Vista features a woodworking shop and creative arts studio for hobbies like painting, crafting, and ceramics. You can reignite a passion for past interests or learn a new skill to make your own décor for your apartment. Create items like gorgeous paintings, elegant ceramic vases, or beautiful birdhouses to define your space in our community.
An Exceptional Retirement Lifestyle and Gorgeous Senior Apartment Homes Await You at Summit Vista
Our Life Plan Community in Salt Lake City, UT, has a variety of floor plans to match any lifestyle and sensible pricing models that work with almost any retirement budget. Contact Summit Vista online or call us at 801-758-3138 to learn about our available floor plans and details about Spruce Grove, our community’s newest addition opening in May 2023.