Apartment Decorating Ideas to Make Your Rental Feel Like Home

Making a small space feel truly homey can be tough, especially when your decorating options are limited by rental rules and landlord laws. If you live in an apartment, condo, or rental, you can still make a space your own with a few strategic design ideas. Let these apartment decorating ideas inspire you to fill your rental with style and personality.

1. Apartment Lighting

Good lighting can completely transform a room, and its source doesn’t need to be a hardwired ceiling fixture. Invest in lamps to place on end tables, nightstands, and side tables. Position floor lamps to illuminate dark corners, and hang plug-in sconces in hallways or above sofas. Plug-in undercabinet lighting will give your kitchen work areas new life and make cooking tasks easier.

2. Hidden Apartment Storage

Place furniture in the corners of rooms at an angle, and use the space behind to stash baskets of extra linens, toys, crafts supplies, or whatever else you need to store. Select baskets that coordinate with the room’s style. This helps functional storage read as stylish decor.

3. Apartment Bathroom Furnishings

Bring furniture into your bathroom to add function and style. A slender table with a drawer can be used for storage and as extra counter space. A sturdy chair can become a perch for clean towels.

4. Extra Apartment Storage

Turn awkward apartment features in your favor. Tap odd corners or narrow closets for storage or a cozy seating area for one. In this living room, two narrow nooks provide storage for office and crafts supplies, and curtains can be drawn to conceal the spaces.

5. Apartment Living Room Furniture

Use colorful garden stools as impromptu coffee tables or bedside tables. These relatively lightweight furniture pieces can easily be moved from room to room and are much easier to carry up apartment stairs than a bulky table. Look for a color or finish that coordinates with several spaces in your home so they can travel between spaces and always look like they fit right in.

6. Small Apartment Ideas

In any small space, using mirrors is a decorating trick that works wonders. They reflect light and make a space feel bigger. Hang a large mirror in your apartment’s dining space, living room, or bedroom across from a window, so it is in a prime position to reflect natural light back into the room.

7. Work with Apartment Features

Vintage buildings have plenty of charm, but some original elements can pose roadblocks for your best apartment decorating ideas. Rather than cringe at something you don’t like, embrace it and find a work-around. If the bathroom tile is a shade you can’t stand, for example, pick a color you do like to serve as the room’s main hue. The tone of green used in this bathroom has just a twinge of yellow, which helps the accents to stand out and the yellow tile to recede. Try a blue-green with powder blue tile or sherbet orange with salmon-color tile.

8. Out-of-Sight Apartment Storage

A beautifully skirted table provides both style and storage. Beneath the fabric, you can use the open space or shelves for out-of-sight storage. Try the skirted-table trick as a small apartment bedroom idea that houses shoes or handbags below or in a living room to hide media components.

9. Pile on Throw Pillows

Even if your rental walls are white and your seating is nondescript, the smallest of decorations can make a big impact. Bring personality to your apartment with plenty of fun throw pillows. To make changing your look easier down the road, buy pillow covers and pillow forms separately. New covers can go on the forms, and the old covers can be stashed away without taking up much storage space.

10. Ideas for Apartment Floors

In a rental situation, you’re often stuck with whatever finishes are in place when you sign the lease. If your apartment’s carpet or flooring is not so stylish, camouflage the problem with an extra-large area rug, or multiple layered rugs, that coordinates with your other decor. Plus, if you’re looking for small apartment decorating ideas on a budget, this fills the bill. You likely won’t need an oversize rug, which can get pricey.

11. Showcase Colorful Apartment Decor

If you can’t paint the walls in your apartment, paint your furniture instead. A new paint job on a bed frame or dresser can be just as impactful as a new color on the walls. Use the furniture colors as a springboard for other apartment decorating ideas to incorporate into your space. Repeat the colors on accessories and fabrics for a pulled-together look.

12. Apartment Wall Art

Small apartment decorating ideas on a budget require a little creativity and ingenuity, especially if you want your deposit back. Proving that temporary can be clever, this art display of black-and-white prints is installed with neon pink washi tape. Mixing almost-all-black prints with lighter fare brings depth to the casual arrangement.

13. Apartment Kitchen Storage

Employ an industrial metal shelving unit as extra kitchen storage if your apartment’s kitchen storage options are less than generous. The cool finish of this unit recalls metal touches that are standard in pro kitchens. Use baskets to corral kitchen staples, and incorporate a few decorative touches to keep it fun.