Decorating a Rented Apartment/house

Decorating a rented apartment/house

Unlike owning a house, renting a house or apartment can pose limitations as to how much decorating and coordinating that one can do to the space they are renting. Everything that a tenant does to the walls, floors or appliances within the dwelling must be temporary unless special permission is granted by the landlord to make more permanent changes. There are however, a few things that one can do to make their area more livable and that are temporary, whether staying for a few months or a few years.

Lets start with the walls.

Most of us that have walked into a rental having found hospital-like stark white walls. This particular shade of white isn’t very contusive to most of today’s decorating styles.

A simple and inexpensive way to help add a splash of color and tie the walls in with some of your furniture and other décor is to apply wallpaper border.

Wallpaper border can be found at department stores such as Wal-mart or K-mart in a huge array of colors and designs.

It’s best to measure the space that the border is to be applied to before going to the store to purchase the border so that you will know how much to buy. I would also suggest purchasing a border application kit when you choose your border. This kit should consist of an x-acto knife tool, a roller, and a flat, plastic smoothing tool to remove air from underneath the border during application.

Once you have your supplies ready, you trim the border into workable sections (3 feet or so) and submerge the border in warm water and rub the sticky side against itself to activate the adhesive. After that you apply the sticky side to the wall and smooth it and viola!

You have now added some spice to that horrible white wall and the best part is that it’s temporary! Just add water and give an occasional scrape and it’s gone.