Her Campus Logo Her Campus Logo

DIY Your Way To An Urban Outfitters Apartment

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at U Iowa chapter.

Admit it, you’ve taken a little trip through the Urban Outfitters’ website “Apartment” section before and have shamelessly piled up your cart with countless “minimalistic” and “hipster” type decorations for your apartment or dorm room. Did you end up emptying your entire cart, two hours of pointless-online-shopping later, due to their insane prices? I know you have…because I have, and I can’t be the only one out there, right? Well, for those of you having vivid and horrifying flashbacks to the pricey decorations you were so attached to but were forced to walk away from, have no fear. We’ve come up with some perfectly “Urban-Outfitter-esque” decorations that are totally cheap and make your apartment look Pinterest-worthy. Move over Urban, we have some DIY-ing to do.

1. DIY Wooden Slice Painting 

This DIY is one of my favorites. All you need is a wooden slice (I found mine here), some acryllic paint, paint pens, tape and a paintbrush. Start by taping the edges, then choose your base colors. From there, you can paint whatever you want! 

2. DIY Yarn Wall Hanging 

If you’re feeling super boho, this DIY is perfect for your apartment. You need a wooden dowel (or you could use a stick from outside to make it look super rustic), yarn and scissors. I suggest cutting eight pieces of yarn for every chunk you loop on, then follow how I demonstrated looping the yarn around the dowel below. After you think you have an adequeate amount of yarn on the dowl, you can cut the yarn into any shape you want along the bottom.

3. DIY Painted Pot

This project is incredibly simple. You will need a terracotta pot, acryllic paint, paint pens and a paint brush. I started by painting the pot completely white, then drew on cacti with a paint pen. That’s all you have to do! 

4. DIY Coasters 

For this simple craft, you will need some ceramic coasters, acryllic paint, a paintbrush and some paint pens (if you want to create a pattern). Again, this craft is very easy; all you need to do is paint on a base color, then add whatever kind of design you want. I included my DIY-ed coasters below for some inspiration!

Those are the four crafts that I did to “Urban-ify” my room, but there are plenty of other crafts I didn’t get to do that I included below in case you want to make your apartement catalog worthy. Happy DIY-ing!

DIY Hanging Nightstand 

DIY Marble Clock

DIY Hanging Planters

DIY Hexagon Shelf

DIY Geometric Rug

DIY Urban Inspired Pillows

Hey, I'm Emma! I’m a lover of writing as much as I am a lover of mochas, breakfast food, and all things striped. As of right now, I am a freshman at the University of Iowa, studying Journalism and Mass Communications.
U Iowa chapter of the nation's #1 online magazine for college women.