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I have been dying to decorate my nightstand since I moved into my apartment almost a year ago. The reason I didn't just do it already?! I decided I was bad at nightstand decor 
. I'm serious! I just couldn't figure out what I wanted.
When I first started thinking about how I wanted to decorate my bedroom nightstand, I thought about doing a mirror on each nightstand. 1) Those ended up being way more expensive than I thought and 2) I think mirrors on nightstands are out of style?! That one might be debatable, but I will say that all my favorite designers had not one picture with mirrors on their nightstands.
Which leads me to my next point...since I wasn't having much luck coming up with ideas in my head, I took to stalking some designers to see how they were designing nightstands in their projects.
I'm showing you the 5 nightstand decor ideas that all the designers used and how I incorporated those styling tips into my own apartment nightstands.
Want to decorate my nightstand with me?! Here's the video:
BEST NIGHTSTAND DECOR IDEAS:
If your room is big enough for a larger nightstand, get one.
This is my guest bedroom in my apartment.
This is my bedroom.
When stalking Pinterest, I realized that a common theme among the designer pictures were that a lot of them had larger nightstands.
You can see from the first picture in my guest room, that I really didn't have a lot of room to work with so I went with the largest nightstand possible.
In my bedroom (right picture), I had room to get a nightstand that was much bigger. Plus, I liked the idea of having extra storage. Large nightstands can get really expensive fast and I wasn't finding any in my first-apartment ~tight~ budget UNTIL I stumbled upon these in the baby section. They're actually baby changing tables but the price and size was right so I bought them.
While they're not the best quality in the world (I would compare to Ikea), they are perfect for the space and I love them.
Either hang or layer frames on/above the nightstand.
Artwork, artwork, artwork!! I have been loving artwork so much lately because I really feel like it makes the space look more "lived" in. Whether it's hung on the wall or leaning on your nightstand, it will make it look a lot more curated and not so thrown together.
Sarah actually drew those leaves above and we have them for you to download for free here.
ALWAYS add lighting.
I feel like this is an obvious, but you never know!
Not only will lighting add a design element to the nightstand, it makes it a whole lot more practical. I even have those special lightbulbs ready to go where you just have to say, "Alexa, turn off my lights" ;).
Almost every single designer nightstand had coffee table books.
I feel like I'm quickly aging because the new thing I get excited about these days is coffee table books. Please tell me theres another 23 year old out there like me .
The designers usually have one or two coffee books stacked on top of each other closest to the bed.
Coffee table books can get pricey fast, so what I usually do is go to a thrift store like Goodwill and get some books that are coffee table book size. I will then flip their cover inside out and 95% of the time it is white. Sadly, I couldn't find any at my local thrift stores so I ordered these instead from Amazon. Definitely would have been cheaper with thrift store books but believe it or not, these were really well priced for new coffee table books!
Here's the ones I used on my nightstand:
Finish off the nightstand with something on top of the books.
Top off the books with a picture frame or another decorative decor piece. On my personal nightstand I always keep face lotion and aquaphor which is ugggllyy so I opted for a cute box that I got from Target.
Those are the main takeaways from my hours of stalking designers nightstand decor ideas. Hopefully someday I become a nightstand decorating expert myself 
.
Here's Everything On My Nightstand:
