It’s finally time to show you our fully decorated balcony! One of the things I was most excited about with this apartment was the fact that it has a (albeit tiny) balcony. I haven’t had outside space in years, so whenever I wanted to enjoy the sun I had to walk over to the nearest park. I loved doing it, don’t get me wrong, but having a little place right next to your home that you can just quickly hop on to is so valuable. When we got this apartment we barely had any furniture and we bought almost our whole interior new. That was obviously quite an investment, and since it was November and cold anyway, we decided to put off decorating the balcony until spring. Well, ladies and gentlemen, spring has come around and the balcony is completely finished. I can’t wait to share what we did with it!
But first: a little before. I didn’t take any good “before” pictures as that’s something I always realise I should’ve done in hindsight. Anyways, this is a screengrab from one of my moving vlogs where I show you around the empty house, and the balcony stayed exactly like this until we started the makeover a few weeks back. As you can see, the whole thing kind of looks like a dirty concrete bathtub. Not a very warm and welcoming space to spend time in, if you ask me.
I started out by scrubbing the whole thing down to get it nice and clean. When that was done, we picked up some deck tiles from IKEA and laid those over the concrete to create a much more inviting and tasteful flooring. This made such a huge difference! Incredible impact. The balcony instantly looked more like a living space, even without any furniture.
As the balcony is really small, I felt like I needed to go in to decorating with a plan. The first thing I did was determine what function I had in mind for the space. What I wanted most was to create a space where two or three people could sit comfortably and relax, eat and work. I also knew I wanted lots of plants, but considering there isn’t much space, my priority when it comes to plants was with kitchen herbs.
After determining the function, I tried to figure out what style and vibe I wanted to give the space. I’ve had a Pinterest board dedicated to balconies for a while (some of which I shared in this inspiration blog post), and looking at it I noticed I gravitate towards a light, neutral colour palette with many green plants.
Having all of the planning out of the way, all that remained to be done was to head out, buy everything, and put the place together. Let’s take a look at how that worked out!
To maximise the space that’s available, we placed a garden bench against one of the sides of the balcony. We got lucky that it fits in there absolutely perfectly! Next to that, against the wall opposite the house, is a little foldable table. It’s large enough to be functional but small enough to walk around to get to the bench. Come autumn we can fold it down against the wall to store it. Then there’s one foldable chair at the moment which can be placed next to the table as well to provide extra seating. We’re considering getting one more chair as it would fit and we could seat four people that way when we have friends over, but so far it’s just the one.
Behind the bench there’s a planted hanging off the side of the balcony. Ideally I’d love to hang it on the outside of the balcony to create more space, but unfortunately that’s not allowed in our building. In the planter I have a few herbs and some wild flowers (purchased from the store, because that’s the kind of world we live in, haha!).
Above the bench on the other side, there’s a little piece of wall where we hung this lantern that used to be in my room in Utrecht, remember? I think it looks amazing out here and it gives the balcony a lot of character.
On the bench I have two cream coloured cushions to sit on, and two decorative linen pillows: a grey one and a beige one. There’s also a more statement fringy grey piece. These make the bench a bit more comfortable and make the space look warm and inviting. I always feel like fabrics do so much for a space! There’s also a nice blanket that you can use when it gets a bit more chilly. I stuck to more raw, natural materials for my decorations to create a cohesive, light but slightly rustic vibe.
On the table I have a cream coloured table runner and these two adorable bird statues we found at the garden center. At first I wasn’t sure how I’d use these, but now I think they look absolutely perfect out here.
On the other side, next to the door to our bedroom, there’s a little corner where I wanted to place a large plant. We spent a lot of time at the garden center picking out the right plant to go here, and in the end we chose this boxwood. It feels nice and large without actually being huge, and it fills the space nicely with a dense greenery while being relatively easy to care for. Also, I’m going to confess boxwood trimmed into shape always reminds me of palace gardens, haha!
There’s another hanging planter here with more kitchen herbs. They’re not only useful, but they smell amazing and I think they look beautiful too. I love all the different textures and colours of green.
On the ceiling we hung these cute light bulbs. They give off a really cozy vibe and are perfect for those long summer nights when you want to sit outside until after sunset.
The deck tiles and furniture are all IKEA. The bench, table and chair are from the Äpplarö series. The sitting cushions are Hallö. I’m pretty sure the table runner is IKEA as well, but I’ve had that one for years. The lantern is Rotera. All the other accessories, including the decorative pillows and lantern stand, are from my local garden center.
I’m over the moon with this balcony. I love how much I’ve been able to do with such a small space, and I think it looks much larger now than it did back in its bathtub days. I spend so much time here now! Whenever the sun comes out I jump at the opportunity and sit here for my meals and work breaks. We have sunshine in the morning here at the moment, so I can sit in the sun until about 1PM and work on my laptop afterwards, as we’re in the shade then and I can actually see my screen. One more thing I’d like to do is to hang some hanging plants from the ceiling, but I’m not sure we’ll get around to that as it would require more drilling into the walls and we’re not big fans of that. I’m super happy with the way it looks now, anyway! I feel like my vision came alive and it’s the most rewarding feeling :)
Love it, nice job! :)