It seems like so many of the rentals I have been in over the years come complete with super stalk blindingly white walls. And most of the time, there's a do-not-paint policy. Really? So strange. You'd think they'd at least do some kind of soft white color, but no, always white white for serious white. So what does a renter do with those white walls?
Well, you pretty much have a few options. The first is to be a rebel & paint them anyway. I totally did this in my last rental. I painted the living room more of a tan-ish color, and the kitchen a pretty yellow. I did get some money taken out of my returned deposit because of it, but I probably could have painted over it back to the white when I left & maybe it wouldn't have been an issue. However, by that time I had lived in numerous white-walled apartments & just wanted my walls to have a little color! I felt that it was worth it. Oh how I loved that apartment!
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| Me in my last place... December 2008 |
Another option is to decorate your white walls with
pretty wall decals like these from
Byrdie Graphics on Etsy
Or removable wall paper, like the kind offered at
Murals Your Way. This wallpaper is completely removable & you can order it in different sizes depending on what you need. I can picture it making a wonderful backslash in a kitchen! They have a wonderful page of
"cool examples" here. This stuff is just stinkin' cool!
Another would be to hang wires along the top of the walls or a metal ceiling rack & hang fabric from them. Creating a type of curtain covering on the wall.
Or of coarse, you can leave the walls white & work with them that way. There have been tons of beautiful inspiration photos flying around the internet for white walls lately! Here are some that caught my eye.
I feel like the key to pulling this off is to either go full-on white & really have a lot of white & natural colored pieces in the room, or, really bring on the color, so that all the colorful things in the room really pop. This is becoming more & more appealing to me & I'm starting to feel like I want a room with white walls in my next place & to have fun making that work.
Do you have white walls in your rental space? How do you decorate with them?
Follow along with my 31 days of loving my rental series here:
