How to Prepare a Good Looking Apartment for Rent
By Anna Tomalik
An apartment for rent usually looks bland — bare white walls, aged carpets, empty windows and a few mismatching pieces of furniture. Nothing impressive, right?
Future tenants stare at hundreds of the same-looking spaces trying to pick a cozy home for themselves. And we don’t help them decide if we keep our places for rent wishy-washy.
So it’s time for a change. Apartments for rent deserve to be dressed with a flair and allure renters with excavated beauty.
To make it happen you will have to make some major adjustments — add life to space, color it up a bit, put small accents here and there, and make the apartment feel homey. The investment should not exceed $500 and will pay off, as tenants will throw in a few bucks more for a well-curated place.
To help you out with the decorating process I’ve come up with painless and inexpensive ways of making an apartment pretty.
1. Clear the space
Firstly, you need to set the ground for further trimmings. Declutter the apartment by removing unnecessary items. Throw away old carpets, curtains, blinds, chairs, mattress, and electric equipment. Tear off wallpaper and take off hanging shelves, paintings, and hangers — unless you hang things on walls thoughtfully.
Once you get rid of unimportant items and decors, paint the place with an off-white color. A neutral scheme will make a perfect background for lively touches of any style. Hang plain, clean curtains or blinds. Don’t add too much stuff, at this point, your apartment should look simple and plain.
2. Liven up the interior with a wall mural
One of the simplest ways of making an apartment lovable and joyful is sticking a temporary easy-to-instal wall mural. A mural is a printed-out piece of artwork which you can apply to the wall within minutes. It can be a piece of your collection, a cartoon hero, a photo shoot from National Geographic, Japanese art, typography, or a simple pattern. In short, anything.
For a rental place, neutral designs are better than flashy ones as you need to keep in mind that you’re creating a clean space for your tenant. Choose something in pastel colors, or a sketch. It will add a spark of creativity to the room but will not cloy it.
Wall murals come in a price range from $ 150 to $250, depending on the size. When you switch tenants you can tear the mural off and stick on a new one.
3. Powder the flaws
If your apartment has a bad view from the window, which oftentimes happens inside the city, mask it with a stained sticker. This kind of a sticker is a stained glass design printed on transparent or translucent window film. It adds a color vibrancy to the place and creates an ever-changing spectacle of light as the sun wanders through a day.
For large windows, stained stickers may be a little bit expensive, a price would start at $200 and go up to $600. However, a cover up like this last for years and serves many tenants as a mood uplift.
4. Apply a theme here and there
To ginger the place a bit, stick some stickers around — dandelions, butterflies, stones, or trees. Choose a neutral motif so that it will compose with a favorite design of future renters.
The price for wall stickers start at $20 and go up to $200, depending on its size. At times of changing tenants, you can peel off the sticker, use it elsewhere, or replace with a new one.
5. Break the whitish with a chalkboard paint
Cover one of the walls, best in the kitchen or living room, with chalkboard paint. A colored wall will break the boredom of a white space and will be a place of free self-expression. Your tenant will be able to make the wall personal — write a poem, draw a flower, or scribble a life motto. And when you’ll be renting to a new person, you’ll just wipe the chalk off.
Chalkboard paints usually come in a black color at a price of $20, butBenjamin Moore offers an entire rainbow of dyes for $55. The safest designing option is a black or gray shade, but if you feel like it go pink, indigo, or orange.
6. Buy modular furniture
For furniture, I’ve got one simple thought — buy as little as possible and make sure that you can move each item around. Avoid hanging shelves because things attached to the wall are difficult to change. Think about pieces of furniture which residents can adjust to their lifestyle and tastes.
Grab an under-100 bucks modular sofa which a tenant will be able to arrange to the composition that suits him or her. Throw in a free-standing bookshelf, a small table, and two chairs — items that can be placed anywhere.
7. Decorate furniture with stickers
For old but usable furniture, there’s a painless and affordable way to tune them up. Choose a sticker with a theme that suits the design you’ve already created. Then place a sticker on the front or sides of the closet and table top. Within minutes, the item will transform from a pauper into a beauty queen.
Stickers will stick anywhere you wish — on the fridge, desk, coffee tables, heater, glass doors, and more. If you decide to change the designs, you can peel them off and transfer them to another location.
For new furniture, a sticker may serve as a protective surface. So with every change of tenants you can remove and replace it with a new one.
Stickers for furniture are usually smaller than the ones for walls so the price should not be more than $50 per item.
Invest in beauty
A decorating energy that you spent on creating an appealing space for tenants will pay back with their smiles, extra cash, and loyalty. Busy people who seek for out-of-the-box products will appreciate the place you made for them. As what they are looking for is an apartment which they can call home as soon as they close the door.
Awesome designers from @PIXERS_ craft gazillion of murals and stickers for walls, windows, and furniture. You can find a piece for your apartment at pixersize.com.
