Start With The Bed, Because It's Yours

The one piece of furniture in a rented room that's often the tenant's own is the bed, or at least the mattress. If the landlord's mattress is old, sagging or simply not right, replacing it's the highest-return change available and it's portable: it comes along to the next place. The same goes for the frame if the room is let unfurnished. A frame chosen for the person who sleeps in it, rather than for the cheapest option that came with the flat, changes the feel of the room immediately, and looking through bedroom furniture for better sleep with a specific room in mind is far more useful than accepting whatever was there on the first viewing.

If the landlord's furniture must stay, ask whether it can be stored. Many landlords are happy for a tenant to put a bed frame in a garage or a loft for the duration, provided it comes back in the same condition.

Walls Without Holes

Command strips and their equivalents have transformed what's possible. Picture-hanging strips hold frames up to several kilos and come off cleanly if the instructions are followed, which mostly means pulling the tab straight down rather than out. They're the answer for art, mirrors and lightweight shelves.

For anything heavier, a large leaning mirror or a canvas propped on a chest of drawers does the job without fixings. Removable wallpaper, the peel-and-stick kind, is now good enough to be worth using on one wall, and it comes off without damage if the wall was properly painted in the first place; test a corner first. Fabric hung from a tension rod, or a large tapestry on strips, covers a wall for almost nothing.

The rule with all of it's to photograph the walls before and after, and to keep the packaging of anything removable so the removal instructions are to hand at the end.

Lighting Is The Biggest Change Nobody Makes

Rented rooms have a ceiling pendant with a shade that's been there since the last tenant, and a switch by the door. The single biggest upgrade is to stop using it. Two or three lamps at different heights, a bedside light, a floor lamp in a corner and something low on a chest of drawers, make a room feel designed. Warm bulbs, 2700K or lower, make magnolia walls look cream. Smart bulbs that dim from a phone remove the need to touch anything the landlord owns.

If the ceiling shade is unbearable, replacing it with something else and keeping the original in a cupboard is universally reversible.

Textiles Do The Heavy Lifting

Bedding, curtains, rugs and cushions are where a rented room becomes personal, because they're entirely the tenant's and they cover the things that aren't. A large rug over a tired carpet changes the floor. Curtains hung from an existing rail, or from a tension rod inside the frame if there's no rail, change the window. A decent duvet cover, a throw and a couple of cushions change the bed, which is most of the room.

The trick is to choose a palette and keep to it. Three colours across all the textiles read as a scheme; six read as a jumble.

Storage That Leaves No Trace

Freestanding is the word. A clothes rail on wheels, a chest of drawers, a set of stacking boxes under the bed, an over-door hook rack, a ladder shelf that leans. None of them need a fixing and all of them go to the next flat. Wardrobes that need to be screwed to the wall for safety, which is most flat-pack ones, can usually be fixed with a single screw into a plug that fills afterwards; ask the landlord first, and most will say yes.

Small Things That Make It Yours

A proper doormat outside the bedroom door. Plants, in pots on saucers so the carpet is safe. A bedside table that was chosen, not inherited. A candle or diffuser in a scent that's always the same. A scheme for the bed, made every morning. None of it's structural and all of it's the difference between a room that's lived in and one that's occupied.

Before Moving Out

Everything comes down four weeks before the end of the tenancy, not the day before. Strips are removed properly. Holes, if there are any, are filled and touched up. The original shade goes back on the light. The landlord's furniture returns from storage. A room that's been personalised reversibly should look exactly as it did on the inventory, and the photographs taken on day one are the proof.