If like me you currently rent your home, you’ll know how hard it can be to add any personality in to it. Especially if it comes with the magnolia walls and beige carpets that seem to be standard in rented properties! Over the course of the past 6 or 7 years, I’ve picked up some great decor tips for renters. I started off in a small 2 bedroom ground floor flat, then moved to a small Victorian 2 bedroom semi detached house, and now we’re in a 3 bed 1930s (I think) semi, and these tips have served us well in all three! I thought I’d share them with you and show you some of them in action in our home.
Sofa – DFS / Console Table – B&M / Coffee Table – La Redoute / Prints – Fy, Gayle Mansfield Designs, Sarah Docker Illustration, Oliver Bonas, John Lewis & Magma Books / Photo Frames – Fred Aldous, John Lewis, Wilko, Homesense / Candles – Homesense, Woodwick & Sainsburys / Polaroid Clip Frames – Hema / Cushions – Very & Dunelm / Pom Pom Wreath – Woolly Leopard / Rose Gold Lamp – Homesense
First things first, make sure you find out what the rules are. Some landlords are super fussy when it comes to decoration. Many like to keep things as a blank canvas to appeal to more people, but sometimes you may be lucky and find your landlord is pretty flexible. We’ve always had the same rules at each of the properties we’ve lived in: no painting, but things can been hung on the walls so long as any holes are filled and painted over before we depart.
I know of people who have been allowed to redecorate whole rooms though, and others who have been allowed to paint walls so long as they were returned to their original colour before leaving. It’s always best to check first before you do anything to make sure you don’t get off on the wrong foot!
One of the easiest ways to brighten up a space and my favourite of my decor tips for renters is to add colour. I LOVE colour. If I had it my way there would be a different colour paint in every room, but instead I have to be clever and inject in through other things. Our living room for example has lots of fun primary colours in it – our big armchair is yellow, and I’ve scattered cushions and throws across that and our sofa in complementary colours and prints.
Not only do these help to liven up the space, but they also add warmth and texture too. It makes a somewhat cold, blank space feel instantly more interesting.
Bookshelf – Dunelm / Armchair – Made.com / Cushions & Throw – H&M / Plant – Asda / Print – John Lewis / Photo Frames – TK Maxx & John Lewis / Record Player – Crosley / Candle – Jo Malone / Metal Basket – H&M
Command strips are a renters best friend! Think you can’t hang your artwork? Think again! This is the ultimate of my decor tips for renters. As soon as you get something up on the wall, it instantly transforms the space. As you can see from the photos, I have a lot of prints and framed photos. We created the gallery wall above the TV by using command strips to hang these pieces, and we have more artwork dotted around the walls in more or less every room.
The beauty of Command strips is that they can be taken off without leaving a mark. (As long as you do it carefully! We’ve had a few incidents where paint has chipped off ever so slightly, but it’s easy to fix with a bit of sanding and a touch up of paint.
Plants are a great way to make a house feel more homely in my opinion. A little greenery really brings a space to life and adds layers and texture to a room.
We have plants of all shapes and sizes from small cactus plants to almost ceiling-high plants that add a bit of drama!
I always used to think that you shouldn’t really put a rug over a carpet, but since we moved in to our current place, I’ve completely changed my mind! We brought a couple of rugs over from our old house which had wooden floors throughout most of the downstairs, where we used them to add warmth. We didn’t really expect to use them in a carpeted house, but as soon as I lay one down to try out, I loved it.
It completely broke up the flat, plain look of the beige carpets and helped us to create a more defined living area within an open plan lounge and dining room. We’ve since got some new furniture and moved it to the back of the house, under the dining table. Again, it really helps to section off a space within a large room. (And will also act as a barrier between the table and the carpet when Oscar starts weaning and inevitably throwing food all over the floor!)
Dining Table & Chairs – Ikea / Sideboard – Sue Ryder Charity Shop / Bowley & Jackson / Candles – Sainsburys, Woodwick, Next / Cactus – Ikea / Plant Pot – H&M / Grid Photo Print – La La Lab / Havana Print – Hey Day Designs / Photo Frames – TK Maxx, Homesense, Asda, John Lewis
We’ve recently upgraded our furniture from the old Ikea pieces we’d had since we moved in to the flat almost 7 years ago. I wanted to move away from the white geometric cube pieces and get some new items that would warm up the space and add interest. We’ve got some great pieces now that are focal points within our home.
We’ve got a brilliant bookcase from Dunelm that has a mixture of open and closed shelving. I wanted to style this with lots of bright books and accessories since it faces the living room door, and it really catches your eye as you walk in.
Amongst other pieces, we also bagged a gorgeous vintage drinks cabinet for £65 on Facebook Marketplace, which I had so much fun styling up. It looks brilliant in our dining room and makes a great feature of an otherwise plain wall.
Unless you’re really lucky, chances are there are certain things you don’t like about the home you rent. If those things are cosmetic, then there’s probably a way to hide them.
For example, our house has an old fashioned serving hatch linking the kitchen and dining room, which for us serves no purpose at all. Its slap-bang in the middle of one of the main walls in our dining room and meant that configuring the space with furniture was a little tricky as it was in the way. I figured since we didn’t use it, we could hide it! So now we have the drinks cabinet in front with some strategically placed prints propped on top. Granted, they don’t cover it completely, but they take your eye away from something we didn’t want to see.
I also wasn’t a huge fan of the fireplace. The mantelpiece is ok and the hearth is pretty nice, but the fire itself doesn’t actually work and the coals on it are a bit of an eyesore. Again, we’ve propped some prints up to hide the fire and give us something a little nicer to look at!
Vintage Drinks Cabinet – Facebook Marketplace / Cocktails Print – Etsy / Letter Board – Primark / Glasses – Vintage, Debenhams, M&S, Homesense, Sainsburys / Pineapple – Homesense / Resin Coasters – Unique Resin* (PR Product)
I love how some quick and easy hacks can make a pretty drab space look so much warmer and more welcoming. It feels like ‘us’ here, even if it is only for the short-term. We’re now on a mission to save up and fingers crossed, buy our own place next year. Renting can get a bad rep, but it has served us well over the years whilst we figured out what we like in a home and what we don’t.
I hope you liked my decor tips for renters! Do you have any clever tips to help make a rented house feel like a home?
C
xox
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