Light Your Rental Home Your Way!
It has never been easier to make your rental home reflect your style and personality. However, with rules in place to make sure that your landlord’s home is not affected. It can be tricky to add a personal touch – but it is not impossible! All you need is a little bit of creativity to help with rental lighting.
At some point, you may need to make a compromise between what you want to do and what you can do. This will mainly be dictated by what your landlord is comfortable with and what you have agreed to prior to signing your tenancy. But don’t worry, this does not mean the style of your new rental home will suffer. In fact, a lot of the time, what you want – you can have. You just need to know what you’re looking for and where to find it.
There are always barriers to overcome when decorating your rental property but. Luckily for you, we’ve done all the research for you and have the answers you’ve been looking for. So sit back and begin to unpack your new rental decor.
What are the main barriers when decorating your rental property?
• You are unable to add a personal touch
• Don’t want to buy large items as you may not be able to take them when you leave
• Struggle to get the sofa up to the 15th floor
• You don’t want to drill loads of holes or make too many changes that you’ll have to make good when you choose to leave
• You don’t want to spend money on the property when it does not belong to you
To make life easy, we’ve taken each of these issues, and have created a section outlining how to get over each hurdle.
How to make your rental home your own – creating a personal touch to an uninspired setting
No matter what point you are at in your rental home decorating journey, it is always important to keep your main goal at the forefront.
You want to show that your home is a comforting sanctuary where you can unwind. You also want to ensure that your home decor reflects you as a person and suits your wants and needs. This is why interior schemes exist. Individual designs that suit a trend. This doesn’t need to be a modern or ‘current’ trend. In fact, many interior trends have been around for years. Which scheme you pick is entirely up to you and your personality, but we would certainly recommend taking a look at our Trends Page to get a good idea of what lighting would suit each scheme. Our Lighting Trends page is also an excellent place to find new and exciting trends that mirror the always-changing zeitgeist of interior design.
Now that your overall scheme has been decided, it’s time to start planning. We could sit here and lecture you on how to fill your home with the essentials and then begin to build on them with ornaments and decorative pieces. However, that’s all a part of the journey and not something we can necessarily dictate. It’s all down to personal taste. However, we can give you an insight into what lighting typically works well in a rented property. The main categories for lighting in your rental home are ceiling lights, wall lights and lamps. It is possible to change your ceiling and wall lights with modern lighting practices. We will go into more detail on table lamps and floor lamps later.
How to change the ceiling light in your rental home
You may be lucky enough to like the ceiling lights that are already installed in your rental home. This is not the case for most of us. It can be frustrating – dressing your home and your ceiling lights simply don’t match your style. Well depending on the fixture you have a couple of options.
One option would be to have a conversation with your landlord and explain your predicament. If the ceiling rose is larger or the same size as the original light fitting. It is likely an easy switch that would not leave any permanent marks on the property. Simply store the original light fitting and switch it back when you move. The problem with this is you are spending money on an electrician twice and the property isn’t even yours!
The better option (if possible) would be to use an easy-fit ceiling shade. Many modern ceiling shades are designed to mimic the effect and spectacle of a ceiling pendant. This method is only feasible if your rented property fashions a hanging or flushed suspension. An easy-fit shade can create a massive difference in a room and provides the perfect opportunity to add your personal touch. Many different styles and materials are now used to create easy-fit shades. It has never been easier to find a shade that matches your interior design scheme.
An easy way to change your wall lights if you rent
Now that your ceiling light is sorted, it’s time to tackle the wall lights. Surprisingly, this can be a little bit trickier than ceiling lights. As more often than not, a wall light will need to be installed (which leaves marks). However, not all wall lights require an electrician to install and wire up. Plug-in wall lights offer a fantastic compromise and would leave very little evidence once taken down. Obviously, it is still important to ask your landlord, however, as long as the holes are filled in once you take them down, most landlords will have no issue as it is no different to adding nails to hang a picture. Plug-in wall lights have seen a massive rise in popularity recently. The wired look has become a common look in modern homes. Plug-in wall lights will typically include a switch on the light fitting and can often be adjusted for directional lighting. Making them not so different to a stand-out wall light.
How to plan for the future when lighting your rental property.
You’re probably not going to be renting forever, let’s make sure you can take everything with you when you go. Although the majority of this section applies to furniture and decorative elements. We will be focusing on how you can incorporate different types and styles of lighting into your home.
Let’s say you’re in the dream situation where your landlord has given you full flexibility to make the home your own. I understand this isn’t the case for everyone, however, you may still find some helpful tips so keep reading! In this scenario, you may be tempted to fit the luxury crystal chandelier you’ve had your eye on for a maximalist look. The trouble is, that the chandelier may be heavy, come as one whole unit (in a large box) or in many different small parts that will need to be assembled. Either way, these all pose challenges when it comes to taking the light down and moving. Where will you store the large box? What if you lose a crystal whilst relocating? These are all points you need to take into consideration when deciding what ceiling light you want for your rental home.
This does not mean you shouldn’t invest in large statement items. I do not want to discourage you, I simply believe that all possibilities should be considered when installing lights into your rented home.
Let’s say you don’t want to invest in a large statement light, but you still want to achieve the maximalist look. Well, you’re in luck, because there is a very thin line between minimalism and maximalism when it comes to lighting. Take a small glass ceiling pendant for example. On its own above a kitchen island, it creates a subtle, sleek look. Now add two more around it and suddenly you have a statement pendant cluster or pendant bar that creates more of an impact on the overall setting. These particular pendants would come in a small box. Making them easy to pack or store, and would come in one assembled part (or a very minimal amount of parts).
Making a statement with small lights doesn’t necessarily mean you need multiple lights to create a spectacle. In fact, if placed correctly, any ceiling pendant can become the focal point of any room. I won’t go into the ins and outs of ceiling light placement. However, if this is something you would like to learn more about, why not read our fantastic guide on all things ceiling pendants.
Lamps can also make great investment pieces whilst adding value to the overall scheme of your home. Table lamps are probably the easiest way to add your personal touch to a rental home – offering style and character whilst remaining versatile and transferable. You can place your table lamp wherever you want in your rental property (providing a plug is in close proximity) and never leaves a mark on the walls (as opposed to wall lights). This opens up a lot of new and exciting opportunities to make your rental property feel like home.
A lamp (both table lamps and floor lamps) has two major purposes: to produce light and to fit the theme of your room. Table lamps are almost always individually switched, meaning you can create the perfect ambience throughout the day based on placement, brightness and volume of lamps.
No matter the situation you’re in when renting; whether you’re a student in shared accommodation, or you are renting whilst between homes, you can always invest in your future with lighting, furniture and homewares.
View all Table and Floor Lamps
How to avoid making mistakes when decorating your rental home. Get it right the first time around!
A common mistake people make when renovating their rental property is they tend to buy everything at once – then try and piece it all together. This can lead to a variety of issues. It is far more beneficial to spread your spending and give yourself time to dress your home. Here are a few benefits of this method:
1. It spreads the workload. Like many things in life, doing everything at once can get tedious, tiring and boring. These are not the emotions you want to feel when creating your home environment. Instead, you want to get excited with each new element, giving value to every item and spending time deciding where you want to place each piece of the puzzle.
2. You get the opportunity to sit back and evaluate. Don’t get this confused with hesitancy – if you love something, get it! But this approach allows you to piece your home together bit by bit, and once you sit back, you may realise that the extra potted plant would distract from the overall theme. Get the foundations sorted first, then build to complement them.
3. It will be easier to pinpoint what’s missing. If your room is fully decorated on day one, what happens when you realise that a key element to your room has not been purchased? Now there is no room and you will have to compromise style to fit your forgotten essential item. Luckily you were sensible and spread your spending. You had time to realise, and you have plenty of space for your essential piece to go.
4. It gives you time to adjust and reinvent. There’s nothing worse than buying a large number of homewares and realising that, actually, they don’t match your expectations or design scheme once you see them in situ. In this event, you would either need to return the entire collection, or you can try and make it work. This is never a fun situation. You are much better off learning this lesson early on – increasing the likelihood of getting it right the first time.