Elevate your rented living room with easy clean upholstery

Decorating a rented apartment brings its own, unique set of challenges. Any changes you make need to be reversible, otherwise your landlord won’t be best pleased. And then there’s the question of whether it’s even worth spending money on a home that isn’t yours?

We believe the answer is a resounding ‘Yes’. To ensure your rented property really feels like home, it’s vital to inject your own, distinct personality into the interior. And with the help of FibreGuard’s durable, stain-resistant fabrics you can do just that.

Here, we explore ways in which you can feel truly at home in your rented space by introducing character, colour, pattern and texture.

The most important things to keep in mind when decorating your rental

Of all the rooms in your apartment, the living room is arguably the most important. After all, this is where you’re going to put your feet up after a long, hard day, seeking a relaxing refuge from the outside world.

How can you pull this off? The 3 most important things to keep in mind when decorating your rental:

1. Choose furniture and accessories that make you feel comfortable. Make sure everything you own gives you that 'welcome home' feeling!
   
2. Consider multi-functional pieces like sofa beds or storage footstools, that can be moved around and brought to your next home
3. Select hard-wearing and easy-to-clean fabrics for furniture: obviously we recommend FibreGuard

Let's dive into this a little.

When it comes to living room décor for your rented apartment, it’s vital to ensure every element you select helps you to feel calm and comfortable.

Your furniture needs to be sinkably soft as well as super practical.

Ideally, the pieces you choose will be flexible enough to work in any space so you can easily move them from one apartment to the next. Bonus points if the furniture is multi-functional – a sofa bed, for example, or a footstool with hidden storage.

It’s also worth thinking about selecting fabrics for your furniture that will be hard-wearing and easy to clean. That way, they will stand up to the wear and tear of everyday life, and still be in great condition when the time comes to move on.

FibreGuard’s colourful, high-performance fabrics are the perfect choice for renters. Not only are they luxuriously soft to the touch, they’re also stain-resistant, fade-resistant and highly durable.

Clever styling ideas for your rented living room

Just because you’re renting, it doesn’t mean you can’t create a personalised space which feels unique to you. The secret is to make sure you express your personality via your interior choices.

Why not display treasured items you’ve collected on your travels?

Or choose some of your favourite photographs and display them, gallery-wall style, in a range of stylish frames?

These touches will quickly scale things up from the bland, white walls of a typical rented apartment, bringing your space to life.

“My favourite hack for instantly making a rental place feel like home is adding soft furnishings like cushions, curtains, rugs and throws to corners of your home. The result is immediate and depending on where you shop, doesn’t need to be expensive.” – Medina Grillo, Instagrammer and author of ‘Home Sweet Rented Home: Transform Your Home Without Losing Your Deposit’

Another great way to bring character to your rented space is to create a cohesive look throughout the apartment.

Using the design principle of a ‘red thread’, you can add touches of a single colour, material or texture to create a visual link between the rooms in your home.

This might take the form of a flash of yellow, the use of dark woods, or a textural link such as velvet.

Related Read: Colour Blocking: How to make his bold trend work in your home

Where to find even more inspiration for your rental home

When it comes finding interiors inspiration, Pinterest and Instagram are your new best friends. Use hashtags such as #howirent to find clever decorating hacks for rental properties and start following influencers and interior designers whose style really speaks to you.

Our own FibreGuard blog is also packed full of inspiration for renters, covering diverse topics such as outdoor living, dog-friendly design, and trends including dopamine décor.

It’s also worth remembering that there are many ways to bring character and personality to your living space without making permanent changes.

Removable wallpapers or temporary wall decals, for example, can make a big impact with relatively little effort. And you can display artworks via removable hooks or simply prop larger pieces up against the wall for a relaxed, contemporary vibe.

Make your home your own with our easy clean fabrics

To sum up, don’t feel you have to ‘put up’ with the décor in your rented apartment simply because you’re renting. If the style isn’t to your taste, you can still put your own stamp on the place with characterful furniture, fabric and accessories.

Try to keep your landlord on-side by making them fully aware of any significant changes you have in mind in relation to paint colours or built-in furniture.

If you can encourage them to ‘buy’ into your vision for the place, especially in terms of how it might appeal to future renters, you may find they’re much more amenable to changes than you might have imagined.

Proud of what you’ve achieved with the décor in your rental apartment? Then share your decorating tips on Instagram