City apartments come with their own set of rules. Here’s how we approach decorating in Sydney’s CBD, plus three very different projects that show what’s possible.
Living in Sydney’s CBD is a particular kind of lifestyle. You’re surrounded by harbour views, rooftop bars, world-class dining and the hum of a city that never quite switches off. It’s exciting, it’s convenient, and the apartments are often architecturally impressive. But when it comes to actually decorating a city apartment? That’s where things get interesting.
City apartments are their own design category. They tend to be newer builds with open-plan layouts, generous windows, and clean contemporary finishes. The ceilings are often higher than you’d expect, the views can be extraordinary, and the spaces are purpose-built for modern living. All of which sounds like a dream brief, until you realise that without thoughtful decorating, these apartments can feel more like hotel rooms than homes.
That’s the gap we love filling. At EB Studio, we’ve decorated apartments right across the CBD and its fringes, from Barangaroo and Darling Harbour through to York Street, Liverpool Street and beyond. Our city clients tend to be busy professionals, interstate visitors, investors, and young professionals starting out. Each one has a different brief, but they all want the same thing: a space that feels considered, comfortable and unmistakably theirs. Here’s how we approach it, along with three of our favourite CBD projects.
What Makes City Apartment Decorating Different
City apartments have a set of challenges and opportunities you don’t encounter in suburban homes. Understanding these upfront is what separates a decorator who works in the city from one who truly understands city living.
First, the spaces are designed for efficiency. Open-plan living is standard, which means your living, dining and sometimes working zones all share a single room. Making each area feel defined without using walls is a skill, and it’s one we’ve refined across dozens of city projects. Rugs, lighting changes, furniture placement and even the direction a sofa faces can all create invisible boundaries that make an open-plan apartment feel like it has distinct rooms.
Second, the views. Many CBD apartments have views that are genuinely spectacular, and the interior needs to complement that outlook without competing with it. We’ve found that restrained palettes, natural textures and lower-profile furniture work best when you’ve got a harbour or skyline view doing the heavy lifting outside your windows.
Third, the lifestyle. City dwellers use their apartments differently to suburban homeowners. The apartment is often a retreat from a big day rather than the centre of family life. That changes the brief. We’re designing for relaxation, entertaining friends, and the feeling you get when you close the front door and the city noise fades away.
If you’re curious about what working with a decorator actually looks like, our guide to interior decorating costs in Sydney gives you a realistic breakdown of what to expect.
Designer Tip: In a city apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows, be strategic about where you position your sofa. Facing the view is tempting, but sometimes angling it so the view is to the side creates a better balance between watching TV and enjoying the outlook. We often recommend a swivel armchair that lets you do both.
Our CBD Projects
We’ve worked on a number of apartments in Sydney’s CBD, and what we love about these three is that they represent completely different briefs: a luxury weekend retreat for interstate clients, a young professional’s very first apartment, and an investment property refresh that needed to deliver a return. Same city, very different stories.
City Luxe Unit: A Weekend Retreat in the Heart of Sydney
This project was all about luxury meets practicality. Our clients are based interstate and use their Sydney CBD apartment as a weekend retreat, a home away from home for when they’re visiting the city. They sought our expertise to curate the perfect furniture selection, embracing a vision of opulence and comfort that would serve as a sanctuary every time they arrived.
Drawing inspiration from luxury hotel suites, we created a space that exudes elegance and warmth. Rich velvets, citrus tones, and sumptuous textures took centre stage, offering nods of luxury throughout the apartment. From plush upholstered armchairs and dining chairs to decadent rugs, every piece was carefully selected to evoke a sense of indulgence and relaxation. The blue velvet armchairs flanking the living area are a real showstopper, and the bar cart (stocked and ready for a Friday evening arrival) perfectly captures the apartment’s personality.
We had all furniture pieces delivered to our warehouse and installed on a single day. All three beds were made with freshly washed sheets, bathrooms had fresh towels placed in them, and the kitchen was fully fitted with all utensils, glassware and dinnerware ready for our clients to move straight in. They literally arrived with a suitcase and the apartment was waiting for them, fully operational and beautifully styled.
See the full City Luxe Unit project on our portfolio.
Designer Tip: If you’re furnishing a second dwelling or a city apartment you’ll only use part-time, think about the arrival experience. A well-stocked bar cart, quality bed linen that’s already made up, and a kitchen fitted with the essentials means you can walk in and immediately relax.
City Bachelorette Pad: Fun, Colour and a Fresh Start
Welcome to the prettiest bachelorette pad you’ve ever seen! We worked with our young law graduate client to fit out her very first city pad after moving to Australia from New Zealand. The brief to us was beautifully simple: “have fun with colour and make it girly.”
We absolutely loved this one. The apartment came alive with soft, girly touches of pink paired back with lemon yellow tones and accented with brass elements. Every piece was chosen to reflect our client’s personality, her optimism, her confidence, and her excitement about this new chapter in a new country. It’s a true bachelorette pad in the city, and it proves that a small apartment with a bold brief can produce some of the most joyful results.
This project is a great example of what happens when a client gives us a clear direction and the freedom to run with it. When you know what you want to feel when you walk through the door, even if you can’t articulate exactly what that looks like, we can translate that into furniture, colour and styling that delivers.
See the full City Bachelorette Pad project on our portfolio.
If you’re setting up your first apartment, our bachelor pad ideas article (which applies equally to bachelorette pads) covers everything from where to start to the pieces that make the biggest impact.
York St Corporate Unit: A Smart Refresh with Serious ROI
Not every city project is about personal style. Sometimes it’s about smart investment. This corporate short-stay unit on York Street was very tired and run down, and in desperate need of an update to keep enticing visitors to rebook. Our client, an investor, needed us to refresh the space on a tight budget while ensuring a higher rate per night.
Due to the prime location in Sydney’s CBD it was already a popular spot for short stays, but the interior was letting it down. We updated the carpet, gave the walls a fresh lick of white paint, replaced the curtains with newer blockouts and sheers, and replaced all furniture throughout the unit. Nothing extravagant, just considered, practical choices that made the space feel fresh, modern and inviting.
The result? The unit is now booked out more than 90% of the year, which is an excellent return on investment for our client. This project is a great reminder that good decorating isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s a business decision. When the interior matches the location, the bookings follow.
See the full York St Corporate Unit project on our portfolio.
Designer Tip: If you own an investment property or short-stay unit in the CBD, the interior is directly connected to your nightly rate and occupancy. A tired-looking apartment with outdated furniture will always underperform compared to a fresh, well-styled space, even if the location is identical. We regularly work with investors to refresh properties cost-effectively, and the ROI typically speaks for itself.
The City Apartment Design Challenges We Solve
Making open-plan living actually work
Open-plan is the default in city apartments, but it only works if the zones are properly defined. We use rugs to anchor the living area, lighting changes to differentiate dining from lounging, and furniture placement to create soft boundaries without blocking sight lines. A well-placed bookshelf or the back of a sofa can do the job of a wall without sacrificing the spacious feeling.
Storage in spaces that have none
City apartments are rarely generous with storage. We solve this with furniture that does double duty: ottomans with internal storage, console tables with drawers, bedside tables that actually hold things rather than just a lamp. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the kind of practical thinking that makes a city apartment genuinely liveable rather than just good-looking.
Lighting that creates atmosphere
Most new apartments come with basic downlights and nothing else. Downlights are fine for general brightness, but they create a flat, clinical feel, especially in the evening. We always layer in table lamps, floor lamps and pendant lighting to create warmth and atmosphere. In a city apartment where the evening is often when you’re actually home, this makes an enormous difference to how the space feels.
Who Lives in the City (and What They Want)
Our city clients tend to fall into a few categories, and understanding who you’re designing for matters as much as understanding the space itself.
Young professionals setting up their first apartment typically want a space that feels grown up and intentional, not like a share house they happen to live in alone. They’re usually decisive, open to colour, and appreciate when we push them toward bolder choices they wouldn’t have made on their own. The City Bachelorette Pad is a perfect example of this.
Interstate or international clients using a CBD apartment as a base want something turnkey: walk in, everything’s done, no decisions left to make. They’re usually time-poor and happy to trust us with the direction, as long as the result feels luxurious and personal. The City Luxe Unit shows exactly how this works.
Investors want maximum impact for minimum spend. They’re thinking about nightly rates, occupancy percentages, and guest reviews rather than personal taste. We love these briefs because they’re clear, measurable, and the success of the project shows up in the numbers. The York St Corporate Unit is a great case study in this approach.
Practical Considerations for CBD Projects
A few logistical things worth knowing if you’re decorating a city apartment.
Building access is everything. Most CBD apartment buildings have strict delivery windows (often 9am to 3pm on weekdays), goods lift bookings, and specific loading dock requirements. We coordinate all of this as part of our project management, but it’s worth knowing upfront that delivery logistics in the city are more complex than in suburban areas. We always do a recce before ordering anything oversized.
Strata rules in city buildings can be more restrictive than suburban ones. Some buildings require floor coverings to meet specific acoustic ratings, limit renovation hours, or even require approval for hanging art on external-facing walls. We check all of this before we start so there are no surprises.
And if you’re furnishing from interstate or overseas, our turnkey service is designed exactly for this situation. We can manage the entire process remotely, from virtual consultations and concept presentations through to the final install, so your apartment is ready and waiting when you arrive.
Want to understand how our turnkey service works? Our blog post on what turnkey interior decorating is walks through every step.
Decorating a City Apartment?
Whether you’re setting up your first CBD pad, furnishing a luxury pied-à-terre, refreshing an investment property, or simply want your city apartment to feel more like home, we’d love to help.
This article was written by the interior design team at EB Studio, a full-service interior decorating and design studio based in Mosman on Sydney’s Lower North Shore.
