Furnishing Your Apartment

I never thought I’d miss my college dorm room furniture until, staring into the barren, white-walled expanse of my first apartment, I truly realized that it was gone. Overwhelmed by the emptiness of it all (well, all three rooms of it), I had a sudden distorted nostalgia for all those university-issued fixtures: Blonde-wood dressers and their perpetually dislocating drawers. An unyielding love seat with a penchant for inducing back spasms. My twin-sized plastic mattress that buckled under the weight of even the tamest sex act. It's not that I actually liked these furnishings (or the Soviet-era design sense they evoked). But faced with the prospect of buying everything from scratch, they seemed, well, homey.

Thankfully, bolstered by advice from my apartment-dwelling friends, some help from family, and a lot of scrupulous bargain hunting, I successfully pieced together a fully furnished apartment (for a reasonable price) within a month of signing my first lease. Best of all, I banished dorm room furniture to my distant memory. Here are a few guidelines to help apartment newbs do the same.

If you don't even know what you need, check out About.com's Top 10 Furnishings for First-Time Buyers. Also, for advice on purchasing specific items, check out our guides to buying a mattress, TV, couch, and air-conditioning.

Before You Buy

Measure Everything

Before you start filling the pad with furniture, bust out that tape measure and draft an accurate floor plan of your apartment. Take especially careful measurements of hallways, stairs, and elevators, as well as any turns in your new building’s staircase in case you have to haul large pieces of furniture up to a fourth-story walk-up. Once you know the dimensions, use this handy Arrange-a-Room tool for ideas on how to set everything up.

Trick of the Eye

Very few first apartments are mansion-sized. Most recent college grads (myself included) have to make the most that they can with little space. Here are tips for making that small pad seem larger:

• Choose space-efficient furniture that has more than one use. A futon or pull-out couch can comfortably accommodate a couple of sedentary butts vegging out in front of the TV, as well as double as a guest bed. In the dining room, save space with a drop-leaf table and some classy-looking collapsible chairs that fold up when there’s no beer pong or poker going on.

• Don't overbuy. Even the most spacious apartment can quickly become cramped with too much furniture, so try not to go overboard and stick to the basics.

• Anchor a room with simple, neutral-toned pieces. Besides making your space look bigger, they'll allow you to make bolder choices with artwork, wall coverings, and accessories.

Decide on a Décor Style

Your new pad may not be worthy of the pages interior design mags like Domino, Home, or Martha Stewart Living (which are great places to troll for design ideas, by the way), but it should still reflect your personal tastes and style. Maybe you want the sleek, minimalist look of assemble-it-yourself pieces from Ikea, or an eclectic collection of flea market finds. Either way, choose a décor style and run with it. For more ideas, check out SoYouWanna.com’s décor tips or the popular home improvement blog, Apartment Therapy.