One of the major downsides of rented accommodation isn’t just the famous rent versus mortgage debate, but it’s about decoration.
Quite often, landlords are overly stringent on what they allow you to do in your home. It means that you are often left with a magnolia decorated apartment or house, that really doesn’t inspire anyone.
Fortunately, there are solutions, and this is what today’s article is about. I have put together three points that have really helped me in my moments of neutral rented hell – and allowed my rented property to really come into its own (and feel like its mine!)
I spoke to my landlord
My first piece of advice is to simply speak to your landlord.
Many tenants fall into the trap of automatically assuming that their landlord isn’t going to take kindly to their requests. As it turns out, it’s not always like this.
In my case, my landlord was open to the majority of requests I made. She was fine for me to put pictures up on the wall – as long as I repaired the holes at the end of the tenancy. By the same token, she was also fine for me to decorate the wall with a new color. She made the point that if it’s a “respectable” color, she would probably be happy to keep this at the end of the tenancy, but anything that was too bright would have to be returned to its previous, neutral form. This, in my eyes, was a perfectly reasonable condition.
Of course, it’s not always possible to have this productive back-and-forth with landlords but as the saying goes, if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
I turned to wall-friendly accessories
When it comes to decorating a bare, rented apartment most of us immediately think of putting pictures, mirrors and a whole host of other objects that can make a mess of the walls.
I didn’t try any of the above. Instead, I went for “wall-friendly accessories”. In other words, objects that don’t actually touch the wall.
For example, I have a large sideboard in my living room. I decided to decorate this with a bouquet from Avas Flowers, and couldn’t be happier with the results. Avas Flowers have a lot of examples on their social media pages of how flowers can make a real difference in neutral decor schemes, so I would urge you to check them out. The Avas Flowers Twitter page is over here.
Of course, it doesn’t just have to be about flowers. You might turn to ornaments or floor lamps to create the effect. This is really about thinking outside of the box.
I didn’t just focus on the walls
So far, we’ve spoken a lot about decorating those bare walls through various means. However, as we’ve just alluded to, you can think more outside the box.
For example, what about rugs? They won’t leave any sort of mark on the floor, yet can make the world of difference to those cream carpets or laminate floors that are so common in rented accommodation.
You have other options as well. It might be photo frames standing on a cabinet, or plants stood in the corner of a room. In the grand scheme of things, other elements of your home can outshine those neutral walls if you really put your mind to it.
