Making Your Modern Apartment Homely

Modern apartments are great, often built in city centres or other fantastic locations, they are spacious and made with everything you need. However, the one thing they are often lacking is the personal touch, and the cosy, homely feel that you need from a home. Quite often these modern apartments all look the same, the wooden or tiled floors, the white walls, grey kitchen cabinets...you get the idea. For some people who don't want to bother with decorating or doing any DIY then this is perfect and for some, it is the reason they went with a modern flat in the first place to avoid having to do this to an older house. For others though, the location is, and they still want to put their stamp on their place, so here are a few tips on how you can make your home unique and homely:

Start With The Walls

Depending on how many rooms you have will depend on if you want the same colour throughout your flat. If you have the space, then treat every room as a separate room just as you would with a house. If it's smaller, then you might want to stick to neutral walls throughout and personalise in other ways. Also, try a feature wall, perhaps all the other walls could be one colour and then one with some exotic wallpaper. Decide on your colour schemes first and add some colour into that apartment to get started. Next, for the walls, they need pictures, either photos or artwork or posters - this really adds the personal touch as well as brightens up those walls and adds character to your home. Get a good variety of different items for the walls, various sizes, colours, different frames and be adventurous with how you place them on the walls.

Invest In Quality Curtains

Long, thick curtains add real luxury to a room and if you get decent quality ones, even custom-made in a beautiful fabric, this will really add to the personality of the place as well as adding comfort and warmth to the apartment.

Change The Doors

You'll be surprised how much of a difference this makes as you might not even notice doors. However, get some new ones, and your flat won't look like anyone else's anymore.

Get A Headboard

Just like the luxury curtains, an upholstered headboard can add another level of comfort and luxury to your home. It will make your bed look completely different and again will give it a unique look that no one else has.

DIY The Bathroom

Okay, you don't actually have to Do It Yourself, you can get the experts in if you aren't a professional builder or plumber, but getting your bathroom redone and personalised just for you is a winner. Bathrooms are a personal place, you might just need more storage space, or you might hate storage space, and your idea of the perfect bathroom is having little baskets on a shelf or having minimal products in it. Do it your way, get the colours right, the layout and make it your own.

Fluff Up Your Floors

Get some beautiful rugs down. Again the better the quality, the more luxurious they will be and will make your home more cosy. When you have hard floors then having something fluffy to walk over on your bare feet is ideal as well as that it just makes the apartment look better and homely, adding warmth and colour where you really need it. Plus, it's far cheaper than getting a carpet fitted, and there are some fabulous designs available too. You can find more carpet stores coventry pa.

Buy Second Hand

Buying vintage, antiques or second-hand is a great way to get some unique furniture in your house so that you don't end up with the same apartment as everyone else filled with the same IKEA furniture that everyone else has. Try antique fairs and car boot sales as well as looking online for some interesting pieces of art, a beautiful chair or lamp.

Plant Plants

Make sure you add some greenery to your home. If you're in an apartment, it's unlikely you'll have a garden so bringing in some plants is really good for your health as well as makes the place look a lot smarter, greener, homelier and more personal

Inject Colour
In any way you can, the walls the curtains, the furniture - make sure you're bringing in colour to your home. The easiest and cheapest ways to do this is by getting colourful accessories such as cushions and throws which can also be swapped or changed as little or as often as you want if you get a little bored and want to change the colour scheme. 

Spending time on your home is very important, it is your home, and it is your nest, so make it yours. You spend a lot of time at home, and you need it to be somewhere that you want to be, not somewhere you dread going to or look at the four walls hating them. Also, if you are getting work done in your home and the professionals are in, perhaps it looks like a building site, then be careful of injury as it can be a dangerous and you don't want to find yourself injured or in a lawsuit. According to Shrager & Sachs, as the owner, you are supposed to keep the premises safe for the people that will be on the property. However, this could be compromised, and different insurance issues may override it, so just make sure you're careful but also consult a lawyer if you need to. 

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Uber and Lyft Want to Compete With Public Transit, But Will They Succeed?

Ride sharing platforms like Uber and Lyft have been an essential development for countless Americans, allowing many of us to get around our cities (and even pursue a side hustle) more easily. But despite all of their successes -- and their massive blunders -- experts are concerned that the aspirations of these companies could end up being detrimental to the very municipalities they serve.

Because the average price of a new vehicle in the U.S. is $35,309, owning a car isn't always a possibility for residents. Ride-hailing apps have been a blessing for many people who can't afford the costs associated with auto ownership, as well as for out-of-town visitors. These companies had huge effects on the U.S. taxi industry; despite the fact that taxi drivers are actual employees who have to comply with strict regulations and Uber and Lyft drivers are contractors with no real vetting process, Americans like the ease and low costs of booking a ride through those platforms more than opting for a traditional taxi cab.

In contrast, Uber has always maintained that the company is an ally of public transit. Ride-hailing is meant to be a complement for publicly funded transportation options, with Uber stating on its own website that the company actually supports local transit services by filling gaps in existing service and allowing passengers to more easily access their public transportation hubs. However, that messaging changed drastically when Uber publicly stated that its own growth is dependent upon its ability to compete with public transport -- a market that's been identified as being worth $1 trillion. From 2011 to 2012, U.S. passenger bus travel increased by 7.5%, making it the fastest growing form of travel in the country. But Uber essentially wants to keep passengers away from public transportation and their own personal vehicles in favor of booking a ride with one of their own drivers.

Although Uber lost $1.8 billion last year, transportation experts are worried about the company's new approach. If Uber is able to take over a large portion of its target market, they say, cities would become so congested that there would be no space to move on area streets. Large cities like New York would essentially screech to a halt. If passengers are forgoing subways and buses for cars and SUVs, crowded streets and highways will only get worse. And with Uber soon going public, it's unclear as to what's going to happen next. Although Lyft hasn't explicitly identified public transit as public enemy number one, there's reason to believe the company values itself at more than what the entire U.S. ride industry is worth.

Reportedly, some young passengers are fighting back to embrace public transit and shun ride sharing -- so there may be some hope that these platforms won't have the powerful impact that experts fear. But since public transportation is on a national decline, Americans may have to take action to prevent Uber and Lyft from taking over.