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Renting a home, but feeling stumped by the restrictions of renting? It’s easy to feel like the best thing to do is to tear everything down and whack some paint on the walls, but we’re here to say there’s a better way. You just have to get creative.
Here are 5 clever ways that you can decorate a rent-to-buy home without causing damage or breaking your contract:
Keep reading to get the complete breakdown of how to cleverly decorate your rent-to-buy home without breaking your contract or causing permanent damage.
‘Rent to Buy’ is a scheme which allows you to ‘try before you buy’. Through Rent to Buy, you can rent your home at a reduced rate (usually up to 20% lower than average market rents) while you save for the deposit to purchase it in the future. The scheme is only available to eligible people, which you can learn more about in our blog: Rent to Buy: A Clever Pathway to Homeownership.
Plumlife offers a fantastic range of rent-to-buy houses and flats and can also guide you through the application process. Find out more about Rent To Buy and our developments by clicking the link below.
Personalising your home can be tricky when you’re renting; it’s not impossible, though. There are so many different ways to achieve decor greatness, we could barely fit them all into five points. But we still tried! Here are our smartest ways to decorate your rent-to-buy home without making permanent changes, organised into 5 categories:
Walls in a rent-to-buy home prove a unique challenge. If you want to suspend decorations on walls, you have to drill or nail them. If you want to change a wall’s colour or pattern, you have to wallpaper or paint it. None of which you can do without asking for permission from the landlord.
And yet, because they’re the biggest canvases in your home, wall decor is the most effective way to add life to a space.
Not every wall decoration is as heavy as a framed royal portrait or suspended mirror. You can hang lightweight decorations such as fancy blankets, artwork, and fabric tapestries on the walls using cheap stick-on hooks that can detach as and when you need them to.
This is a particularly good option if you are a crafty person, or know someone who is, because it allows you to crochet, knit, and scrap together your own designs for display. Long, viney plants can also be draped around these types of hooks to add texture.
This is a classic among students, but never stops being charming as you grow into your own place! Print out photos and artwork that you like and just whack them up on the wall with Blu-Tac. This works for posters too, and though you won’t get the clean look that a frame provides, it’ll still feel homely to be surrounded by your favourite things.
If you’re worried about leaving grease marks, you can always stick pics onto dark pieces of furniture like bookshelves and wardrobes instead of walls for added texture.
If you don’t want to use Blu-Tac or an equivalent, use masking tape or decorative tape to stick pictures up instead! These kinds of tapes are designed not to damage whatever’s beneath, so you don’t have to worry about leaving marks or pulling up paint when you’re done.
If you have room, position freestanding furniture so that it breaks up the space on the wall. This is especially effective if the furniture is solid and can be decorated or customised itself — like a bookshelf, wardrobe, cupboard, or display case — because this will create something to focus on other than the blankness of the wall.
IKEA offers a huge variety of affordable, modular furniture to experiment with in your home, and you can often also find great pieces on marketplace and resell apps.
Do you find the modern white and sleek greys of your rent-to-buy home oppressive? Good news! There are plenty of ways you can add colour and texture to your home without painting or drilling.
Use stick-on tiles in the kitchen and/or bathroom to add a pop of vibrancy and intentional design. Tiled aesthetics feel clean and add to the sense of freshness of an area, and are a great way to protect your walls against splashes, spills, and other messes.
Transform your windows with special stickers for glass. You can get a whole variety of designs online to choose from that will add character and transform the look of a feature that is otherwise a blank canvas.
Particularly, use stained glass-style stickers to alter the colour of sunlight coming in while adding beautiful art to your windows.
If you believe in the supremacy of lamps as home illumination (rather than turning on the ‘big light’), you might be partial to these otherworldly bulbs. Stained glass lightbulbs are often LEDs and scatter multicoloured light everywhere, creating a unique glow that decorates your walls without hanging a single thing up.
You can find excellent handmade bulbs on Etsy, and cheaper alternatives elsewhere online.
If you can’t afford the space or money for a bunch of new accessories, focus on just one at a time and choose to decorate spaces you use frequently, since you’ll see these the most often.
Spend a lot of time in the living room? A vivid throw cushion might be what you need. Only use one lamp in the bedroom? Treat yourself to a more inspiring lampshade. Love to cook? Get pots, chopping boards, or even just cutlery of matching colours.
We touched on this a little bit in the wall decor section, but we’ve got even more ways to creatively display photos and artwork for you to consider.
This is a wholesome way to turn memories lost in your camera roll into wonderful features of your home. Custom paint-by-numbers are a great gift and activity to do alone or share with a partner, friend, or even housemates, and you’ll be even more attached to your artwork for having done it yourself.
Get a bag of grippy clips and attach (small) printed photos to anything you can. This might include calendars, bars, wires, string, handles, containers, books, other photos, other frames; anything!
Don’t feel restricted to hanging your decorations up; sometimes you can create a more unique shape by putting large frames and other decorations on the floor. This works best with poster-sized frames or clustered bundles of similarly-sized frames.
Be wary, though, as without careful consideration, this can quickly result in your living space looking cluttered. Use this technique intentionally and near other wall decorations if you can.
Don’t have any photo frames, but do have an abundance of empty or old DVD cases? You’re in luck! Slip your pics into the sleeves and open the cases to create a makeshift freestanding frame you can put anywhere.
Any good interior decorator will tell you the value of having greenery in your home, no matter if it’s real or fake. The added splashes of green and the pops of nature will make any space feel more inviting and homely.
Positioning plants can be important, and it’s wise to have a variety of shapes, sizes, and types of plants around your home.
Place tall potted plants on the floor next to a unit — such as a TV stand or desk — to create contrast and shape. Place viney plants up high, draping their leaves over the corner of a bookshelf or sideboard to add texture and colour.
You can use textured, painted, and oddly-shaped plant pots to add even more interest to a space. Similar to the paint-by-numbers tip, if you paint or make the pot yourself, that will increase the hominess and connection you feel to it.
Our fifth and final clever way to decorate your rent-to-buy home involves the little things: accessories and accents. Accessories feel like finishing touches to a home, making it feel tied together and complete, while often still providing practical use.
Coasters are a great place to start because they’re perfect gifts and can be as cheap as you need them to be (you could even start by taking them from pubs you like). They add texture to a table and can tie an area together if they match the rest of the decor.
Still using the same plates and knives you’ve had since uni? It shows. Get some fresh kitchenware sets to make the things you use every day more You. It’s easy to think of cutlery more like ‘tools’ than decor, but — trust us — nothing will stop you from procrastinating washing up more than having beautiful kitchenware.
One of the best things I added to my home was little dishes for trinkets all around the place. In the kitchen. By the front door. Beside my toothbrush. These are great ‘collection zones’ for random odds and ends you might have acquired in the day, but are also brilliant if you need a more intentional (but not ugly) collection pot.
You can find them in all different shapes and sizes, and you can even get seasonal with it, using leaf-shaped trays for autumn and shell-shaped dishes for summer.
Ever been in a bookshop and wondered where they think you’re meant to keep all those photography magazines and art books? Well, consider leaving them on the coffee table!
This tip works better if your space isn’t so naturally prone to clutter, but an intentional stack of books can make you look well-read and can provide some beautiful imagery for flicking through. Just make sure to switch them up every so often.
You can quickly add an intentional accent or splash of colour by using colourful or patterned cushions and throw blankets. And the best part is, these ‘soft things’ are versatile — you can put them anywhere. Drape a blanket over a desk chair, pile some pillows next to the cleaning cupboard, wrap a blanket over your sofa cushions.
From LEGO sets to paper crafts, there are a lot of options for book nooks that will add heaps of charm to your bookshelves, and if you’ve got even more space, then consider some ornamental bookends for shelves. These can add shape and variety to displays that otherwise just feature trinkets or art.
Our selection of rent-to-buy developments in the Greater Manchester area features homes that are beautiful and affordable for aspiring homeowners and eligible renters. Step into your future by checking out our developments today.
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