Back to School with Style
Bringing some serious style and sophistication to student living in Bristol
Student accommodation has a bad reputation for all the reasons that you can imagine. Old, bland, uninviting and lets face it, grim and grubby. Most peoples first student place will be their first place ever away from family, why should dank and dirty be acceptable?!
We have had the absolute pleasure of working on several student properties in Bristol over the years and this is our latest project. We've been on site right from the start and it's really exciting to see it all come together.
This is a development of 34 individual studios boasting large en-suite rooms with kitchens as well as a student hub on the ground floor.
The rooms
These are far from your average student room. Modern, light and airy with all the facilities needed, plus some super styling
The rooms here are huge and bright, we wanted to inject some colour and fun while also helping to zone the areas to make these studios into cozy homes. Here we painted corners or canopies to create a sleeping zone and section it off from the working and cooking areas.
The easiest way to bring some home comforts in to a student room is soft furnishings, layered textures and cushions. This is also a really good way to put your own personality in to a room.
Here we picked out the green in the walls with the plants, cushions and throws, while adding pops of yellow with planters and kitchenware.
In the orange rooms we also picked out the accent colour with accessories including cushions and decorative bottles. As it was such a vibrant colour we styled it all with more natural soft furnishings and kitchen accessories.
Tips for making a cozy home in a studio room.
Zoning is vital in multi functioning spaces and there are several ways of doing this.
Painting areas in different colours can work really well and is relatively inexpensive. We've used bold colours here but you don't have to. You can create several zones with multiple colours too. In a smaller space it is advisable to use similar tones and hues so as not to overwhelm the space.
Divisions can be created with furniture, shelving, curtains and screens. This can be as simple as a set of free standing shelves or a folding room dividing screen. However, if you want a more permanent structure, open floor to ceiling screening can be built into a room.
Area rugs and flooring can be used to define spaces for different uses. Have one rug in your living area, one in your seating area, a more hardwearing vinyl or wood in your kitchen etc.
Lighting- instead of one or two central ceiling lights use lamps to define the different areas separately. If you're in your lounge area you can turn off your bedside lights and kitchen lighting, leaving a floor lamp next to the seating area on and you can essentially forget that those areas exist for the time being!
Large plants can be strategically placed to block the view between areas and create privacy and separation.
The Hub
This block of student accommodation has everything you could want when moving away from home. And it doesn't stop at the bedrooms.
On the ground floor the building had 3 commercial units that were ready for a total facelift so we got involved and had some fun.
Sledgehammers out and walls down, we created one huge space to become a stylish and sophisticated hang out area complete will pool table, gaming area, laundry and coffee facilities.
We wanted this to have an industrial and urban feel to it, but keeping it modern and fresh.
With an entire wall of windows along one side we could afford to go super dark here using Dulux basically Black (a favourite of ours) to cover most of the walls. A large graphic wall mural takes up another wall. The anthracite kitchen and dark walls are balanced by the stack of white industrial washers and dryers that are housed in the center of the space.
The build
There's a lot of dusty and unglamorous work that goes into these projects and we've been on site throughout this build, check out how far we've come!