Aside from the money that goes into renting homes, one of the main reasons people choose to buy a home rather than rent one is so they can make it truly feel like their own home.

Making a rental apartment feel like a home is one of the biggest challenges of renting. However, it’s a good idea to shift your mindset and make the most of the restrictions when decorating rental apartments! Instead, see them as an opportunity to get creative! Adding color can be particularly difficult when you can’t paint anything in your rental apartment or hang frames and other pieces on your walls. Here we are going to discuss how you can add color to rental apartments to personalize them and make your living space somewhere that feels like your home.

Flowers

Flowers are one of nature’s most beautiful delights. By bringing flowers into your home, not only will you add colors to your rental apartment, but you will also bring in some of the peace and calm that we experience in nature.

Flowers from a florist will usually be the most beautiful, but regularly purchasing flowers can be costly. You could instead pick a couple of wildflowers or grow flowers in pots or in your garden. If regularly replacing flowers is too time-consuming, you can use dried flowers instead. Get some flowers from a florist and just before they start to wither, take them out of the water and hang them upside down using some string until they dry out completely. Once you’ve collected a variety of dried flowers you can arrange them in different ways and they should last forever.

There are now so many artificial flowers that look convincingly real too. If real or dried flowers aren’t available to you, check out 100 yen stores and homeware stores for artificial flowers instead.

You can experiment with how you display your flowers too. If you’ve never had a go at Ikebana, maybe now is a good time to try the traditional Japanese art of flower arranging! 

Decorative Cushions

Almost every household will have cushions. They are so practical for sitting on, using as a pillow, and generally making your home feel more comfortable. Instead of simple cushions, you can add color to a rental apartment by buying colorful decorative cushions.

There are a variety of decorative cushions in stores, ranging from fluffy pastel cushions to colorful abstract designs, hand-beaded cushions, woven cushions, and tufted cushions. There’s something for everyone.

If you choose to buy some decorative cushions, we recommend considering how they pair well with other furniture and decor in the home so that it all matches nicely, if not they could potentially make a home feel more cluttered!

Statement Furniture

Investing in one or two nice unique pieces of statement furniture can be a good way of adding color to a rental apartment. All homes need some kind of furniture, so if you think about what pieces you genuinely need, it is a great way of decorating your home while keeping things minimal and clean.

If you invest in some unique statement furniture that you will love forever, it can also be more sustainable than frequently replacing your furniture every time you move.

Some pieces of statement furniture that can work are armchairs, rugs, coffee tables, drawers, sofas, shelves, and lamps.

Wall Art

Wall art is a great way of adding personality and color to your rental apartment. It is one of the most popular things people use to decorate their homes for a good reason! Nevertheless, decorating rental apartments with wall art can be quite challenging since it is something that can easily damage walls.

There are various ways you can go about incorporating wall art into your home. The easiest option for wall art is framing it and hanging the frames using nails if your landlord or rental agency allows it. Frames are great as they help to protect artwork and they are easy to clean. However, you may not be able to use nails since they can cause visible damage to an apartment

Smaller nails may be more discreet, and the holes may be easier to repair. Instead of hanging one large and heavy frame with large screws or nails, you may be able to get away with hanging some small frames with tiny screws. This way you could make a statement wall with a collection of pieces of artwork. This is a risky move as it could still cause damage so, please consider this carefully if you want your deposit back!

Instead of displaying wall art on the wall, you could always lean a frame against the wall. Use other furniture such as shelves or plant stools to elevate the frame and leave it to rest against the wall.

Posters and unframed artwork are more lightweight so you wouldn’t need screws for these kinds of wall art. At DIY shops and 100 yen stores, you can find command strips and other tools for hanging art. Make sure it is safe to use for your walls though as these could potentially rip the paint or wallpaper off! 

Sticking pictures to the wall using washi tape may be a safer option – although you’ll probably have to replace the washi every so often as it loses its stickiness.

Tapestry

One easy way to add color to rental apartments is by hanging a large tapestry. A thin wall hanging or tapestry will be much lighter than a large frame and therefore easier to hang without causing any damage.

If you’re willing to take the risk, you could hang the tapestry on the wall by using some small nails. If not, you could hang a tapestry by using a large tension pole. You could get curtain hanging clips or sew your tapestry around the tension pole and hang it like a curtain against a wall. This technique works well for any large tapestry or wall hanging when used to cover a whole wall.

There are so many other things you can incorporate into your decor to add color to your rental apartment. It’s often helpful to have a color scheme and a general idea of how you want your apartment to look before you start buying all the furniture. We recommend starting your process by checking out the five principles of Japanese interior design.

If you’re considering moving to a new apartment, please have a look at Village House’s available rental apartments.