black and white living room ideas for apartments
we are cody and sarah jensen and this is our 300 square foot apartment in lower, east side, manhattan i would describe our style as modern, clean scandinavian, and simple. [sarah] i like to add a little bit of coziness to the simplicity so like a few candles or plants. i'm huge into blankets, so like a really nice blanket on the couch something like that. [cody] and i like a storage space for the blankets to go when we're not using them. yeah, he doesn't like them on the couch
this is the tour of our apartment. so when you walk in the front door you're kind of walking into the kitchen in front of you and to the right and to the left is a hallway it leads back to the bathroom and a really small closet and the bathroom is actually one of the most surprising things about the actual apartment whenever we looked at all the apartments in new york city we looked at like 23 apartments almost every single one of them had a terrible bathroom yeah, they were updated. in the hallway is where we hung all of my pictures and quotes and things from my office back home because i didn't want to get rid of them
so i was i was happy we had that little space so then if you walk back out of the bathroom to the left you run back into the kitchen so the kitchen has a full-size stove and oven and dishwasher an apartment-sized fridge and then tons of cabinet space and the only thing that we changed was we covered the countertops with contact paper that makes it look like white marble and it completely transformed the look of the kitchen for sure. absolutely. so then if you are looking at the kitchen and you turn directly around you're gonna be in our walk-in closet and so this is a wardrobe that we bought from ikea so if you turn around out of our walk-in closet you walk into our office
yeah, so working from home a lot we both needed workspaces, and i really enjoy having the option of sitting or standing whenever i work i like to stand as much as possible and these desks are from ikea and actually really cheap option for sit-stand desks because if the hand-crank is not motorized or anything it's nice to have them because if we need extra table space for something you can pull them out put them together like use them for other things besides a desk so flanking our office area is two fireplaces and we filled the fireplaces with a lot of sarah's books i really enjoy the kind of cozy look that that gives. [sarah] yeah, it adds character for sure
[cody] i feel like it provides a pop of color without being too loud. [sarah] yeah, it's not overwhelming by any means. yeahwe also have three shelves above the desks that add a little more depth to the space and i went with a light wood here instead of with just white shelves to kind of give it a little more of that scandinavian look than just everything being stark white. [sarah] so past our office is our living space. so in our previous home. we had a huge sectional sofa with the chaise lounge on it, and i really loved the ability to just lounge at on any part of the couch and so i really wanted something i didn't want just like a loveseat or something i wanted something that was cozier and comfier because i read a lot on the couch and so ikea had this one that is actually similar to
the sectional we had, only a lot smaller. [cody] it's like an apartment sized version of the big sectional we had [sarah] and so i really liked that it had the chaise on it, but it actually doubles as storage. which is really nice there's storage underneath the chaise and it turns into a queen-size bed as well. so if we have guests in town they can stay here and not have to pay for a hotel which i really care about. i like having people over at our apartment. so it kind of had everything in one and it was apartment sized. [cody] and whats awesome is the chaise lounge was an important aspect, but what's kind of an unintended function of this couch is it actually goes from having one chaise lounge to having like a three or four person chaise lounge for
movie watching. you can just pull out the bed but don't take the cushions off and now the whole thing is like a big lounger. then on the opposite wall of the couch is our entertainment center... console area. we have the tv hung on the wall and then below it is a console, and it has all of the electronics in it and wi-fi and everything like that all hidden within the cabinets and then above the tv is a wall shelving unit that is for more storage area as well, so we have just different storage items in there and then we have one cabinet that is completely full of all of our board games i really enjoy just having a collection of games that whenever people are over. we can enjoy
hanging out and talking but have other activities than just watching tv so our living area the couch and coffee table also functions as our dining room so there's a few ways that we use this table if it's just the two of us eating you can just lift the table up and it's a dining table for two people. if we have multiple people over it actually doubles and expands so you can fit up to like six people around the table using our office chairs. we also use it for game nights and things like that and another fun little creative function we found
with this couch is the bed that pulls out under from underneath, you can actually unhook it from the couch and it kind of stands on its own as a bench. so we also use that for additional seating for game nights or dinner parties. you just have to be creative i mean, a lot of multi-purpose furniture is made specifically for multi-purpose, but you can actually use it for a lot more than you think you can or that even the manufacturers made it for if you're just a little bit creative so next to the entertainment center is a white cabinet and this is actually our bedroom. so it is a murphy bed and during the day it actually looks like just a
piece of the entertainment console area. this whole wall looks like a built in unit but it's actually multiple pieces that i put together with the biggest one being a bed. so at night, we just bring it down and now this this room becomes our bedroom and this is one of my favorite things about the apartment because it just adds so much room when we're not using it and when we go to sleep, i mean doesn't really matter how much floor space it takes up... [sarah] it gives us a lot more livable space. so the top of the murphy bed actually acts as a shelf and originally, i thought i would put books up there, but it ended up being a little too heavy so i just used that space to add some more cozy elements, so it wasn't so stark.
yeah i really like the finishing touches that we did on the apartment and this is where we introduced color to the apartment i like to keep the big furniture more neutral tones, to keep it light and airy, but then whenever we introduce art and plants and things like that, that's where we do our pops of color. so on our tv console we have some plants and on the walls we have a piece of art from tulsa that is actually from a tulsa artist that we brought with us that fits our modern clean style, but then also reminds us of home. then we also diy'd these moss art pieces and so this just brings out some more nature
into our apartment. this is one thing that we talked about, with the things that we use as decoration, instead of having photos of buildings or city, which we do really love, but we're also live in new york city, so instead of bringing more of that inside we use this space to be more serene i guess and bring more nature to our living space and so we have actual moss hanging on the wall and then we have two large framed photos that i took when we were in iceland. so we did these photos to bring more nature into the home, but it's also photos that we really love and remind us of a incredible trip that we took with some of our friends and then for pops of color we used our throw pillows on the
couch. [sarah] i think pillows are one of the easiest way to add color and one of the easiest things to change if you get tired of it. [cody] i'm really happy with the way this space came together and really happy with the actual physical apartment that we ended up with. i think it's a great space for sarah and i to enjoy our beginning in new york city together. a studio apartment, to a lot of people, probably seems daunting, but i actually really enjoy having a studio space [sarah] like you have to keep it clean, you have to make your bed every morning to put it up. it was a really fun creative problem to solve with 300 square feet, that was an actual like challenge to see if we could make work, and i think we did a really good job.
it was a lot of fun to do i think you can do a lot more with your space than you think you can if you just plan a little bit. it takes more creativity and more work to make a small space simple and excellent and be free of clutter, but if you take the time and really plan it out and get rid of stuff, you can make a minimal space that feels spacious. even though this is only 300 square feet. i don't feel claustrophobic, i feel like it's plenty of space for us it has everything that we need and i'm really happy with it. [sarah] yeah
that is our 300 square foot apartment in manhattan i hope that there's something that we did with our space that inspires you to do something new with your space maybe be a little bit more creative with your furniture. yeah, so thanks for coming over. bye