The excitement of leaving home for the first time can be somewhat dented when you clap eyes on your college apartment for the first time. This dingy, dark, cramped space is your home for the foreseeable future. So what can we do to make it feel more like a home and less like a dump? There are a couple of things to instantly transform it.

Once you have given it a good clean, see if it needs painting. This can be a lot of fun as you see the place transforming. So your apartment is now clean and fresh bar the horrible dirty carpet. The solution? An area rug.

Your new area rug will make the apartment warm and welcoming, so you won’t be ashamed when people drop round. A lot of landlords now have lino or tiles on the floors of their apartments to save money on replacing carpets as they are much more durable. They are also very cold, so your rug will bring warmth and style to your new home, and will be lovely to walk on.

A bright splash of color on the floor can bring any room to life. If there is one thing that anyone moving into a college apartment should buy it’s an area rug. You can get any size, color and design imaginable. So you may want a plain understated one, or a bright and zany one to suit your personality.

You can now settle into your college apartment safe in the knowledge that you have transformed it with minimum expenditure. If you move a few times during your college years, you just take your rug with you. So if you go and look at a dingy, grotty apartment, you now know how to turn it into a home very quick and very cheaply.