How to Decorate Your Rental Walls Without Losing Your Deposit

Tasos wrote recently about what you can and cannot change in a rental, and the response was something I expected but didn’t fully anticipate.

A lot of people are asking the same follow-up question.

Okay, so I can’t paint. I can’t drill. I can’t do much permanently.

But my walls are blank and depressing and this rental needs to feel like somewhere I actually live. What do I actually do?

This is exactly what this article is all about.

I’ve lived in rentals. I know the particular frustration of standing in a room with blank white walls that belong to someone else and trying to figure out how to make it feel like yours without losing your deposit.

The good news is that the options available now are considerably better than they were even five years ago. Command strips, removable wallpaper, picture ledges, washi tape… The rental decorating toolkit has expanded enough that blank walls are genuinely a solvable problem.

Here are 10 ideas that work, don’t damage anything, and look like you meant them.

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Why Blank Walls Feel So Bad (And Why It’s Worth Fixing)

There’s a certain hollowness to a room with bare walls. It doesn’t only seem like you haven’t put in the work; it has a way of making the place feel transitory, as if you’re in transit and not actually at home.