9 Best Wall Decor for Rental Apartments with College Students


Personalizing a rental apartment can be challenging for college students, especially if your landlord doesn’t allow you to paint the walls or to put holes in them. Do you have to forget about decorating your apartment, or can you still find exciting and simple ways to make it look and feel more like home?

Fortunately, it’s possible to decorate your new studio apartment without damaging the walls. Take a look at 9 of the best wall decor for rental apartments ideas, and figure out how you will transform your apartment:

Decor #1: Add some colours and textures with a standing screen

Colours and textures are important factors in all the best wall decor for rental apartments. If you own a bi-fold or tri-fold standing screen, you could lay it flat in front of a wall to instantly add some colours and textures to any room. You could even use it as a headboard to upgrade the decor of your bedroom.

If you have a screen that looks bland, you could paint it, or maybe even hang pictures and artwork on it so you can display them without damaging the walls of your rental apartment.

Decor #2: Hang your favourite posters

Putting up posters on the wall is an easy way to decorate any room without damaging any wall. All you need is some adhesive putty, and you can put posters anywhere.

You can find posters that feature pretty much anything you want: your favourite band, your favourite movie, your favourite actor or actress, or even your favourite painting. It’s even possible to create your own poster from a photo of you and your friends, for example.

Decor #3: Transform a room with wall decals

Wall decals are not only great to decorate a child’s room. They can feature fun, elegant, modern, or elaborate designs. With wall decals, you could make a tree with a few animals appear on your wall, or put up your favourite inspirational quote and look at it every single day.

And whenever you move out of your rental apartment, you can simply remove your wall decals and place them somewhere else.

Decor #4: Decorate with some tile decals

Tile decals are similar to wall decals, but they are shaped like decorative tiles and can be used to cover up a floor. You can also use them to create a beautiful backsplash in your bathroom or your kitchen, or to add a decorative trim anywhere you want.

Just like wall decals, tile decals are easy to stick to any surface, and they are easy to remove when you need to move out, or when you want to change your wall decor.

Decor #5: Use temporary wallpaper

When we think of wallpaper, we often think of old, faded designs that we don’t want to put up on our walls. But wallpaper is far from boring, and it’s even possible to decorate your rental apartment with temporary wallpaper!

Removable peel and stick wallpaper comes in pretty much any design and colours you can imagine, and you can use it to decorate your walls without damaging them.

Decor #6: Add a removable frame to an unframed mirror

If there is a large unframed mirror somewhere in your rental apartment, you could make it a lot nicer to look at by adding a frame to it.

There are different ways you could do this, but it can be very simple to purchase a decorative trim, and to stick it to the surface of the mirror with Velcro strips that have an adhesive backing. The frame will give some character to your boring mirror, and it will be easy to remove later.

Decor #7: Hang whatever you want with damage-free hooks

If you don’t like posters or wall decals, there is still a way you can hang pretty much whatever you want on your walls without damaging them: use damage-free hooks.

These are easy to install and to remove, and they are strong enough to hold picture frames, artwork, tapestries, and curtain rods. You can also simply use them to hang your coat, your keys or your bags.

Decor #8: Hang photos on a string or a ribbon

With a piece of string or a ribbon and some clothespins, you can display many of your favourite photos on the wall.

You can put a push pin or a thumbtack at each end of the string. If you are not allowed to put any hole in your walls, you can simply tie the string or ribbon to two damage-free hooks.

Decor #9: Hang some painting or artwork

When it comes to decorating a wall, many people think that less is more. To add a personal touch to any room, you can simply hang a painting or a framed print to the wall.

Again, a damage-free hook can allow you to do this without damaging the wall. If you are about to hang a heavy framed painting, however, make sure your hooks can handle its weight before you put it up on your wall.


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