Renter-Friendly Decor

We already covered small bathroom storage. This one is about the other half: how a small bathroom looks. Rental bathrooms tend to come with white tile, a builder mirror and not much else, and because they’re small, every item in there counts for a lot. These are the changes that make the most difference, roughly in order. The shower curtain is the biggest thing in the room In a bathroom with a tub, the curtain is often the largest surface you can change. Choose it first and plan around it. ...

Lots of apartment front doors open with one wall right next to them and another wall at a right angle a few feet away. You end up with a corner and nothing else. Most entryway advice assumes a long flat wall, so it doesn’t help. The good news is that corners are efficient. You get two walls’ worth of hanging space and you don’t block a walkway. Measure first Stand in the doorway and open the door fully. Note where it stops. Anything you put in the corner has to clear the door’s swing, and if it’s behind the door, you’ll lose access to it every time someone comes in. ...

Forest-themed decor is having a moment on Pinterest, and it’s easy to see why. It suits the colder months, it’s calm, and it works in rooms where a holiday theme would feel like too much. The risk is that it tips into lodge kitsch: carved bears, plaid everything, antlers on every wall. The version that works in a regular apartment is quieter. Think of what a forest feels like rather than what’s in it. ...

Around the end of October the living room starts to feel wrong. Nothing changed in the room. The light did. It’s dark by six, the overhead light is suddenly doing all the work, and a room that felt airy in July feels bare. You don’t need new furniture to fix that. Most of what makes a room feel right in winter is light, texture and where things sit. Here’s the order I’d tackle it in, over one weekend. ...

Plenty of apartments have no dining room, just a kitchen and a living room, and you end up eating on the sofa. It works, but a real place to sit down and eat, even a tiny one, changes how the apartment feels. Somewhere to have breakfast, work in the afternoon, and have a friend over for dinner. Here’s how to carve one out of very little space. Find the spot Look for a corner or an end of the living room near the kitchen. Other good spots: ...

Rental bathrooms are usually small and almost never have enough storage: a sink with a cabinet under it if you’re lucky, a mirror that may or may not open, and one towel bar. Everything else ends up on the edge of the tub or the back of the toilet. The fix is to use the parts of the room that are empty: the wall above the toilet, the corner of the shower, the back of the door and the dead space around the pipes. ...

In a small bedroom the bed takes up most of the floor, and everything else fights for what’s left. The way to make it work is to stop thinking about floor space and start thinking about walls, the space under the bed and the closet. Where the bed goes Against a wall. In a really small room, pushing one side of the bed against the wall frees up a usable strip of floor on the other side. You lose easy access to one side, which matters for two people, but for one person it’s almost always the right call. ...

A rental living room usually comes with beige walls, a ceiling light that’s too bright, blinds instead of curtains and floors you didn’t choose. You can’t change much permanently, but a few things that come with you when you move make the biggest difference. Curtains, hung high Almost every rental has blinds and nothing else. Add linen curtains (on Amazon) on a rod mounted as close to the ceiling as you can and a little wider than the window. The window looks bigger and the room looks taller. A few screw holes for a rod are usually considered normal wear, but check your lease; tension rods work if you can’t drill. ...

Lots of apartments don’t have an entryway at all, just a front door that opens into the living room. But even two feet of wall next to the door can do the job of an entry if every piece earns its place. Everything an entry needs to handle: coats, bags, keys, shoes, the mail, and one last look in the mirror on the way out. Hooks before anything else The first thing to sort out is where coats and bags go, because otherwise they end up on a chair. A wall coat rack with a shelf (on Amazon) gives you hooks below and a little ledge above for keys, sunglasses or a plant, in about two feet of wall. ...

A lot of Christmas decorating advice assumes you can hammer a nail wherever you like. If you rent, everything needs to come down in January without leaving a mark. Working within that often ends up looking better, not worse. Walls, without holes 1. Stockings on adhesive hooks. Large removable hooks (on Amazon) along a mantel, or if there isn’t one, along the top of a bookshelf or a console. Use hooks rated for at least three pounds each; a filled stocking is heavier than it looks. Press the strip for thirty seconds when you put it up, and in January pull the tab straight down so it releases cleanly. ...