For a rental property to stand out from others, it has to be unique. Owners know they need to make the property appealing to many people, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have personality!

Decorating for renters calls for cost-efficient but elegant, comfy touches. A few days of rental apartment DIY will increase your occupancy rates and possibly save you time on showings.

Even if it’s an unfurnished rental, staging an apartment can be well worth your while. Good staging makes a rental feel like home and looks much more appealing in online photos.

Renters Will Love Your Thoughtful Upgrades

Not all renovation projects take a lot of time and skill. Starting with an empty apartment, consider these ideas:

Elevate Your Paint Job

Most rentals are painted between occupants, and usually, they’re one color—white, beige, or gray. You do need to stick to neutrals for broad appeal, but why not several shades of white, beige, or gray, with a feature wall in a darker shade to add a sophisticated touch?

Subtle greens can also function as neutrals. Stick to your chosen two or three shades to give the whole space unity.

You could also allow your tenants an option to choose an accent wall color in the bedroom or living room. This will give them more of a connection to the space and allow them to make it feel more like their home.

Don’t Underestimate Mirrors

Mirrors are an easy way to maximize your rental space. There’s no better way to help a tenant imagine living in your space than to actually see themselves! Mirrors can also pull more light into a room and make it appear larger.

Giving your mirrors a custom look with frames is an instant, easy upgrade, and it can cover any mirror edges in bathrooms that have desilvered. A rental apartment DIY project that you can get finished in 20 minutes without tools is to use a frame kit from MirrorMate. MirrorMate offers a tasteful selection of frames that will allow you to match the style of your space.

Upgrade Your Hardware and Lighting

Light fixtures can add a lot of drama and personality to a space. To help your rental stand out from all the other apartments, add decorative pendants over a kitchen island or peninsula, put some vanity lighting in the bathroom, or add center fixtures to bedrooms with linen or glass shades.

New hardware can give your space a more substantial, quality feel. Without spending too much, you can swap out drawer and cabinet pulls to give kitchens and bathrooms an upgrade and an update.

Refresh the Floors

One of the ways to make a rental feel like home is to avoid the inexpensive vinyl flooring and bland, wall-to-wall carpeting you often see. Consider installing laminate wood flooring. It’s durable and will give your unit the appearance of hardwood for a fraction of the cost.

Also, if you install it in bedrooms, renters can add their own area rugs so you won’t have to replace carpeting between tenants. If you’re staging your space, area rugs will warm it up and help to define a seating area in an open-plan design. Just make sure rugs are large enough to go under furniture.

Dress Up Your Windows

If you want your rental to stand out, you can choose 2-inch blinds in bedrooms instead of inexpensive roller shades. They will give the space a more on-trend look and will last longer than plastic shades, which can tear or stop retracting.

Adding long sheer curtains, at least in the living room, immediately updates the room. On large feature windows, curtains should fall to the floor, and if possible, be mounted above the window. This helps the ceiling to seem higher.

Renter-Friendly Wall Décor

If you stage your rental, make the walls beautiful. For staging purposes, large photographs, paintings, or wall hangings have more impact than smaller pieces.

Gallery walls are a way to group smaller pieces of art in a striking way. One idea is a grid-style gallery wall, where all pictures are the same size and are arranged in equally spaced rows and columns to make a big square or rectangle. Mirrors are a great addition to a gallery wall. Pick a MirrorMate frame that suits your style, and if you want a uniform look, match it with similar frames for your pictures.

Many wall pieces can be hung without putting nails in the walls, using peel-and-stick adhesive methods that come off easily at moving time.

More Home Décor Ideas for Renters

The trick to staging a rental is to make it feel like home, but not so personalized that it doesn’t suit a prospective tenant’s taste. Nature has universal appeal, so you cannot go wrong with a few well-placed indoor plants, either hanging, in pots on surfaces, or featured on plant stands. Pillows and throws for couches and beds are also inviting (but not so many that you can’t fit people on them!).

Storage and Renter-Friendly Closet Organization

Staging with storage pieces that double as décor helps renters see how your space can accommodate their possessions. A wooden box or trunk can double as a coffee table. Large baskets can decorate an empty corner and provide storage for games and toys. A beautiful tray on a side table can hold a candle, a vase of flowers, and a container for your remotes.

Some thoughtful placement of storage containers and open shelving units can make closets look more useful and spacious too.

Consider opening up rooms to feel more spacious by swapping out some cabinets for open shelving, maybe floating shelves. Lower cabinets can remain for hiding less attractive items.

Let the Light Shine

You can use your room staging to show renters how much of a difference good lighting makes. Floor lamps and table lamps can give direct light where it’s needed and provide different levels of lighting in a room. They give the option to turn off overhead lighting for a softer, more relaxed mood.

A well-placed mirror can reflect natural or artificial light, acting almost as another light source. MirrorMate frames turn builder-grade mirrors into wall decoration for any style. You can take MirrorMate’s style quiz online for help in narrowing down your choice from over 65 styles.

Decorating for Renters With MirrorMate

There are so many home décor ideas for renters. With many of them being do-it-yourself, like MirrorMate frames, it’s easy to make your rental space appealing, efficient, and unique.