You're out of Mom's house, you've left the dorms, you're up off your friends' futons. You're a young, single man with your own home, and it's time to start living that way. Old towels shouldn't double as curtains.
Your laundry pile won't work as a bedside table. And that old Joe Montana poster no longer works as art. Here are some tips about how to class up your apartment while staying true to what you like.
Your home says a lot about you, so take the time to make it nice. "It's not just about having somewhere to sit," says Nate Berkus, host of a show on Oprah Winfrey's XM radio channel. "It's about expressing your personal taste and your aspirations and your style.
" Don't copy a living room from a magazine, don't hire a professional decorator and don't go for some sleek vision of a cool, bachelor pad. Make it yours. "A new home doesn't need a new man," says Berkus.
"People want to be adults and cut ties to where they came from, but I think that's a mistake. You want to bring things with you, but present them in a new way." Take pictures of friends and family, change them into black and white, and frame them.
Bring an old chair from your parents' house and reupholster it. Hang a drawing you made in kindergarten. Little things can make your place feel more like home, and less like a hotel room.
Books are also a good way to add warmth to a room and to express your personality. Start collecting books and ask for big art books as gifts. You can never have too many books.
Don't treat the bedroom as a box to sleep in. Put some thought into how it's arranged, keep the room clean and make it comfortable. You don't need a four-poster bed, but you shouldn't be sleeping on your old single bed and Super Mario sheets, either.
"You do not want to redo your first bedroom from when you were 8 years old," says Dee Morrissey, owner of Morrissey Thompson-Ryan Interior Design in Colts Neck, N.J. Get a good mattress, either full-sized or queen, buy at least two sets of nice sheets and get a lot of pillows.
You can get away without a headboard if you hang an interesting piece of art above your bed and prop a pile of pillows beneath it. But a headboard is a statement. "Order a headboard and an upholstered box spring, and all of a sudden you're not a child anymore," says Berkus, who has created his own line for the home at Linens 'n Things.
" Painting a room is the easiest way to put your own stamp on the place.
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