Renters Solutions

Your apartment. It’s not quite a dream home. The floors are terrible and the kitchen is in need of an overhaul. Your rental might not be Mr. Right, but it is Mr. Right Now. If the place you call home feels a little dated, here are some easy ways to modernize your apartment.

Between beige walls, brown floor tiles, and oak wood cabinets, most rental apartments have cornered the market on neutral. If your walls are the color of a bandaid, and your landlord has no pity for your palette woes, it’s up to you to take the bull by the horns and deal with it. One of the easiest ways to combat the lack of vibrant color is with really bold bedding and artwork. You’d never walk away from Jen & Kirstie’s happy, welcoming rental and think it’s boring.

Erika’s young and doesn’t spend an arm and a leg on rent. Sure, her bathroom is functional, but all those shades of off-white are a style travesty that could make even the most stalwart of tenants cry beige tears. It’s a rental, so nobody wants to go nuts and spend a lot of money to renovate it, but Erika wanted something a little more fun and befitting her age. So, the goal is to give her an entirely new, bright, amazing bathroom for $500. Think we can do it?

Even more reasons to use these rental-friendly finds.

Light switch plates aren’t something I give much thought to. Until I see a really cute one. Mari, who blogs at Crab + Fish, used washi tape (the craft material du jour) to transform plain light switch plates in her home. It’s simple, cheap and super renter-friendly.As you can see, she didn’t just do one or two switch plates, she liked the look so much that she kind of just kept on going.

Make yourself a little happier with your home, without throwing money down the drain when you move out.

What do you do when you’re living in a small studio apartment, but don’t want people to be able to see your bed immediately upon walking in the door? Apartment Therapy reader Christina was faced with this particular dilemma when designing her friend Ann’s apartment and decided to get creative.

How do you add color to a rental without painting? That was the challenge this client posed to Lisa of Olive Juice Designs. She responded by creating an inviting living room, perfect for entertaining, without pulling out a single paintbrush. From Lisa: A single apartment dweller in San Francisco contacted me to help her with her living room. She admitted that her apartment was lacking in many areas, and she was embarrassed to have friends over.

Almost a year ago, my husband and I moved back to our hometown of Long Beach, CA. We found a gorgeous two bedroom 1930s apartment in our favorite neighborhood. Our landlords updated the space with grey floors and fresh paint. It was almost perfect . . . except for the terribly outdated entryway. It’s the only carpeted, unpainted space in the entire home, and the first thing you see when you arrive.

This week Camille is sharing her real life rental challenge and how she transformed her dingy carpeted entryway stairs (with her landlord’s permission!) into something more welcoming, yet still temporary. If you want to see the first post, check out the before photos here. My husband and I decided to DIY this project ourselves, and broke it down into manageable steps, each of which could be completed in a weekend.

This week Camille is sharing her real life rental challenge and how she transformed her dingy carpeted entryway stairs (with her landlord’s permission!) into something more welcoming, yet still temporary. If you want to start by hearing all the plans, check out the before photos here. Updating an old home is filled with challenges.

Last April, Emily Henderson needed a privacy solution for her rental studio space and wound up covering individual panes with a variety of window films — which not only added fun pattern and color to the space — but also added a helpful and modern-looking window treatment. We followed up with her to hear how it’s doing months later, and whether she thought it was worth doing in the first place.

My friend Joseph has a beige bathroom and asked me to come over and help him do something — anything — to make it better and I jumped at the chance. Because one less beige bathroom in the world is no bad thing. He’s a renter, so it couldn’t cost a lot, and everything needed to be 100% temporary. (You know those pesky security deposits and how they don’t get returned when you make permanent changes.

Joseph's bathroom had some decent bones, but needed a light and renter-friendly makeover. See what we did...