The prices for old apartments continue to rise sharply. Here, you will find tips on what furnishing an old apartment can look like and what should be considered when renovating your dream apartment.
Furnishing an Old Apartment: Retain the Charm
It’s done; the rental agreement for the old apartment has been signed. Now you can start setting up! Or is it about renovating your long-standing apartment and adding new furnishings? In any case, the charm of such an old building must always be retained. Nobody should have arches removed by overambitious craftsmen, and beautiful wooden floorboards should not be covered by laminate or a thick carpet. It is better to set accents that draw attention to the apartment’s most essential and exquisite details.
The typical characteristics of such apartments should be preserved and presented in the right light. Of course, no one has to show their love of old buildings by foregoing any chic: a mix of styles is also possible! Do-it-yourselfers bring something modern into the old building and show with the furnishings that they can get involved with different eras and ideas. Nevertheless, everyone should retain the ideas that classicism and art nouveau once brought with them and let them come into their own.
However, a few revisions are necessary for many old apartments. The former workers’ apartments often have thin walls and poor insulation. The floor plan may not always seem obvious or sensible. However, it can frequently be used to create great living concepts that represent the incredible architecture of the apartments and still enable modern living.
Five Tips for Furnishing an Old Apartment
1. Tradition and modernity when furnishing the old building
Many old buildings shine with stucco on the walls or ceiling. This is not for everyone, but this typical feature of old apartments should be preserved. If you don’t like it, you can use it as a highlight to decorate just one room when remodeling. Or part of the wall, the remaining walls are plastered white. The stucco can only be shown in selected areas and can, therefore, be more easily integrated into the planned mix of styles.
The kitchen offers an example of such a mix: in the old building, part of the wall can be exposed; it is designed in white. But in a way that still allows the bricks to shine through. This wall can replace the kitchen mirror placed in the stove area, but it must then be wipeable. The furnishings consist of modern to futuristic-looking kitchen furniture arranged in a semicircle, which does not just hang along one wall as usual.
A counter loosens the room, as does a kitchen island with an extractor hood. Here, modern furniture and “old” Designing the walls creates a contrast that makes the whole thing fascinating and homely. You can also implement a few decoration ideas, but they should not degenerate into setting up a kitschy hodgepodge. It is also possible to display a highlight: How about a light blue light strip that shines under the furniture? Significant effects can be achieved with lighting, although the aim is not always to provide more light.
2. Furnish old buildings and preserve the wooden floorboards.
This has happened to many tenants in an old building apartment: Out of curiosity, the firmly glued carpet was lifted in one place. What was visible there? That’s right, beautiful wooden floorboards! These are too good not to integrate into the furnishings; instead, they should be covered with carpets or other floor coverings. Instead, they should be sanded and re-polished, giving the old building its charm. They are the counterpart to the stucco mentioned, showing that this apartment has a long history.
Therefore, when furnishing, do-it-yourselfers should make sure that the wooden floor is polished up again by an experienced craftsman or on their own and then, at most, with a small carpet cover-up. This can serve as an eye-catcher in the room or is suitable in the living room for extra coziness. Together with the other details of the apartment, this creates a warm expression that can also be seen in the numerous furnishing ideas in the pictures. This is where love for old buildings shows itself at its best!
3. Old doors are preserved when furnishing.
Many old buildings still have the typical double doors installed everywhere when the apartments were built. They are often not particularly attractive to look at, especially in buildings that are not well-maintained, have no longer functioning hinges, or have peeling paint. Such double doors create a stately ambiance and show that someone with style lives here. Imagine walking through this door that opens on both sides and receiving guests in the salon! Isn’t the apartment big enough for a salon or a large living room?
Nevertheless, the doors should receive special attention when remodeling or renovating. These should fit into the image of the old building, which, with its floorboards and stucco, looks like an image of a stately living space. It combines some decoration ideas that fit into modern times. Please don’t overdo it! If you surround yourself with too many little things, you miss the chance to make the apartment work for you.
4. Shabby chic or modern?
Living in an old building only seems authentic when all the furnishings are correct. This, in turn, should be an image of your personality and reflect it. This means that even if the apartment owner concentrates entirely on keeping everything original and furnishing the apartment in a way reminiscent of earlier times, they should not forget that they want to live there themselves. This means the furnishings can also come from the Classicism or Art Nouveau period if the apartment owner feels comfortable and chic.
But not many people want to live like that anymore and prefer a modern style. Shabby Chic is the solution and can be integrated into individual rooms or as a highlight in any room. The furniture looks used without being “worn.” It comes from other eras and still looks modern. If you don’t like that, do the same for the entire apartment as described above for the kitchen. The condo itself is left original: stucco, floorboards, and doors are restored to look like they used to.
The furnishings and various pieces of furniture are made in a form reminiscent of today’s times. Functional furniture, a futuristic style, or specific details in the decoration clearly show that someone from a modern world lives here: all of this leads to a combination of the old apartment and contemporary furnishings, representing a “lived-in old building.”
5. Don’t forget the hallway when designing.
The hallway is often forgotten when furnishing an apartment: the shoes are next to the door so the next visitor can trip over them. The jackets hang disorderly on the coat rack and, in the worst case, form a kind of mountain. There is another way to design the hallway as an inviting entrance area. Corridors in old buildings are often relatively narrow and shaped like a hose. The reason: In the past, hardly anyone valued this room, and as a mere entrance area, it simply took up space.
Today, the hallway is also a living room intended to welcome guests and the house’s residents. To widen this narrow room, it can be decorated with the typical checkerboard pattern we know from many old apartments. This is possible, for example, with tiles or a carpet with this pattern. The hallway must appear very bright overall to appear more prominent. This, in turn, means that large and heavy furniture should not be placed here. Instead, it is essential to choose graceful furniture that still fits into the style of the apartment. A large mirror with a wooden frame and decorations can, if cleverly placed, visually enlarge the room.
Hanging plants and transverse shelves make the hallway appear less high because an entrance area with a ceiling height of 3.50 m or more usually looks more like a hall and is not at all cozy. An attempt should, therefore, be made to make the entrance area and hallway appear lower, as this seems much more pleasant and friendly.
