Apartment Decorating With Roommates: 3 Potential Conflict Areas to Navigate

By Julia Dunn on September 17, 2015

This article is brought to you by CORT, a subsidiary of Berkshire-Hathaway and the world’s largest furniture rental and relocation services company. To learn more about how we can help college students like you, click here.

Getting an apartment for the first time can be an absolute blast. You’ve got your own space to decorate, organize, and enjoy after stressful days on campus.

However, if you’re going to have roommates or apartmentmates living with you, you’ll realize that they too are looking to customize their space just as you are.

So, what exactly do you do when you’ve got five people and an empty apartment?

Without a doubt, living with others requires compromising skills. When decorating your apartment, you are going to have to respect your housemates’ wishes to design their personal space the way they want to. But in areas that are shared, more dialogue will be necessary in order for all housemates to feel comfortable and at ease in communal spaces.

Having lots of communication between your roommates about which items you each love and which items you just cannot live with (decoration-wise) will save you a lot of trouble later on.

Here are some potential apartment zones that might be cause for conflict when planning apartment decorations with your roommates.

Bathroom

Image Via Flickr

As for decorating a bathroom with roommates, your best option will be to keep it neutral (not skewed towards only one person’s preferences); for example, you don’t get to decide on your own that your Periodic Table shower curtain will be the shower curtain used in your shared bathroom! If there is any doubt about what your roommates will like, it may be best to buy an ordinary shower curtain/rug in a solid color.

If bathroom-sharing is going to be a reality in your apartment, you and your housemates will also need to get used to keeping toiletries and cosmetics organized. If, say, three people are going to be sharing a bathroom, you may consider having three plastic containers or baskets so that each of you can keep your items together.

Having organizational containers in place will make cleaning the bathroom a lot simpler and faster, and it will be easier to tell which items belong to each roommate. Many stores that sell furniture have various organizational units in stock that are very cute and decorative as well as functional–and the last thing you want is a cluttered bathroom!

Living Room

Image Via Pixabay.com

Since living rooms tend to be a bit larger than other shared spaces such as bathrooms, you and your roommates have a little bit more freedom when it comes to decorating the living room. See if your roommates have certain pieces of furniture essential to their comfort in this area, and work out possible configurations so that the entire apartment reaches a comfortable consensus on how to decorate.

Or, if you prefer this alternate approach to co-decorating, you can divide up roommates and rooms so that each person is “in charge” of arranging their respective rooms; this is a great solution for instances where housemates have very strong, clashing opinions about how to decorate a room. Maybe one of you will decorate the living room while the other decorates the dining room. However you divide it, always make sure your housemates feel comfortable enough in the rooms they haven’t specifically decorated to their liking.

Be accommodating and flexible to varying ideas about how rooms will look. After all, it takes some time to figure out what your roommates like and dislike, and how well their ideas work with yours. Accept the reality that you will not get exactly what you want 100 percent of the time, and that is totally fine.

Kitchen

Image Via Pixabay.com

In the kitchen, decorating with roommates can be accomplished through processes similar to the ones outlined for decorating a bathroom or living room. If one person is deemed “in charge” of decorating the kitchen, be safe and keep things neutral as best you can if you haven’t had much time to discuss kitchen decor with your housemates.

Stock the kitchen with “basic” dishes (solid colors work here) and maybe keep your collection of dog-themed plates in an alternate cabinet if your housemates despise them. Alternatively, you can have each roommate buy some dishes they like, and store them all in one cupboard in clusters.

When choosing what to hang on walls and display on small tables, work with your roommates to collect their thoughts and choose decorations you can all enjoy–this could be as simple as a vase of flowers!

If you reach any roadblocks when trying to decorate any room, go onto creative websites such as Pinterest with your housemates for inspiration and cool decor ideas. There might be a great room layout that all of your roommates love, and the group of you can think creatively about how to include elements of this design in your own apartment. Make it fun!

*Bonus Tip: When decorating any room, use the “breadbox rule:” if an item is larger than a breadbox, “that item should be discussed with your roommates before you buy it and bring it into your shared home.”

To reiterate, if decorating with roommates is especially difficult for some reason, keep your decor neutral in shared spaces–you will have your own bedroom (hopefully) to deck out in Big Bang Theory posters and photos of your best friends!

Just because you’re sharing an apartment doesn’t mean you must surrender your style entirely. Finding compromises and cooperating with housemates will be to your benefit–your apartment should house good vibes only!

For more advice on coordinating apartment decor with roommates, click here to read snippets of others’ experiences and gather tips to creating a pleasant home for your whole group. Best of luck arranging your apartment!

Looking for a more convenient way to furnish your off-campus apartment? Rent stylish furniture from CORT and save time and money. For more information on furniture rental packages, click here.

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