Stuart Zullo 
When you’re renting a Liverpool house and want to add your own personal flair there are certain restrictions on what you can legally do. Adding personality is once thing, but adding a nail to a wall or plant to a garden bed is simply not allowed without permission from the owner.
Of course, chances are you won’t be looking to make any huge investments in a house you don’t own, and are unlikely to want to add anything you can’t take with you at the end of your lease; however, it’s only natural to want to make your house cosy and homely by adding your own personal touches. When it comes to decorating your Liverpool rental home the key is to keep changes inexpensive and reversible, so here are our top tips for decorating your rental home.
- Removable picture hooks are a fantastic invention for tenants, especially those who like to brighten their home with wall hangings. They are generally available in most supermarkets, and allow renters to decorate their walls with their favourite prints or family portraits, and then remove all traces when it comes time to retrieve their bond.
- If you’re not fussed on the floor coverings in your rental home, and a rug or mat simply won’t cover enough ground, you can have a preferred style or colour of carpet cut to your exact room measurements.
- A change of curtains can bring an entirely new personality to a room. Of course if you do opt for a drape change, you may need to ask permission from your landlord, depending on whether you plan to change any wall fixtures. If it’s a simple case of sliding the old curtains off the rod and the new ones on, there will be no problem. Just make sure you store the old curtains somewhere free from damp or dust so that they don’t lose condition, otherwise you may be left with the cost of replacing the originals when you move out.
- Some landlords are happy for tenants to re-paint rooms if the colour scheme isn’t to their taste. Again, this is one you will need to ask permission for, even if you plan to re-paint the rooms back to their original colour when you leave. If your landlord permits you to change the colours temporarily, it’s a good idea to go for a slightly lighter shade than the original. This will make your life much easier when you need to bring the walls back to their former shade.
- If your children want a colourful bedroom and have a specific love of all things ‘pirate’, ‘Dora’ or ‘Thomas’, removable wall stickers might just be the solution for you. You can purchase removable wall stickers from many toy shops and baby furniture retailers, allowing you to have a fabulously themed bedroom for each of your children. Good quality stickers will peel off cleanly at the end of your tenancy, leaving you with blemish-free walls once again.
- A change of light fittings may be on the cards if you have far simpler or more extravagant tastes than the home’s owner. This is again generally quite okay with landlords, as long as you ask their permission, and promise to keep the originals safe and replace them when you leave.
- Potted plants are a great way to bring some greenery to a home, particularly if you’re in a unit or have a balcony that needs a lift. A herb garden in the window sill will also add a splash of life to your kitchen… not to mention some zing to your cooking!
If you have any other inexpensive and reversible tips for Liverpool tenants, please share them here. At Professionals Paradise Realty we’d love for all Liverpool residents to enjoy jazzing up their homes and be excited and proud about where they live.