I have done a whole series of posts about renting and how to make your rented house feel like home. As much as I truly believe that there’s so much you can do I also know that sometimes you have to just go with what you’ve got and it might not always be to your taste, you also have to compromise and adapt your style and colour palette to accommodate the space you’re working with to bring the best out of it. Am I making sense?

For example, my bathroom is nothing like the bathroom that I would choose and because we are renting I’m not likely to start ripping it out and putting a new bathroom suite in am I?! So I had to work with what I’d got and adapt my style to fit in around it. There’s no point in trying turn it into my Pinterest perfect space because it’s never going to be that. Neither am I going to accessorise it how I would my dream bathroom because it has got lots of features that I wouldn’t chose and have to roll with. I need to think differently to distract the eye from all these features that I don’t like. So how do you do that?

Well 1st of all look at what can be changed. Painting is one of the most transformative things you can do to a room. In my case the walls were painted yellow, probably to bring out the yellow in the mosaic border tiles which I didn’t want to highlight so I immediately painted the walls white. I didn’t want the bath, sink and toilet to stand out so going white on the walls makes them blend in. White wouldn’t necessarily have been my 1st choice so that’s what I mean about adapting your style to work with what you’ve got. Once it was painted it already looked so much better.

 If any of the rooms in your rental home are painted in a colour that you don’t like and you are not allowed to decorate, put together a mood board which includes other colours that work with your given wall colour. Start to accessorise with the other colours you’ve chosen by adding rugs, cushions artwork etc… This will help the wall colour not to stand out as much and you never know, you might find that blending it with some of your chosen shades, the wall colour might actually look ok after all. 

Once you are happier with the colour palette make sure you have 1 or more (if you have a large room) focal point. Something that you love that will easily grab people’s attention when they enter the room. I have a gallery wall in my bathroom, this is not something that I would necessarily have in my “perfect” bathroom but it really works to add character and again distract the eye from the other side of the bathroom where the yellow, red and green mosaic tiles are. It has also injected some fun into it. In my kitchen I have an old vintage workbench which is definitely the focal point when you enter the room.

Plants are a perfect addition to a room, they will help you to transform any unloved space into a place that makes you happy and bring your space to life. They are also the perfect solution for breaking up larger spaces and also screening things from view.

So I guess what I’m getting at is that in a rental property or even a property that you own but have only just moved into and therefore need to save before you can start renovating, you can’t always have your fairytale interior. But there are so many ways to work with what you do have and turn it around into a space that you love. So don’t stop until you are happy. 

If you need any help in making your rented house feel like home then please get in contact, I would love to help, you can view a list of my styling options here. My express e-styling service is just £75. Also make sure you don’t miss out on future posts by popping your name and email address in the subscription box below.