The chances are, if you're living in rented accommodation on a short term contract, it's fully furnished. That seems useful, of course, but means there's little in the interior that you can put your own mark on. And there are a lot of horror stories when an absent landlord has control over your living conditions. I've experienced poorly constructed furniture, missing drawers, and a leaking ceiling at various points. At best, the furniture has been ill matched and the decor poor.
My current room is covered in ugly woodchip wallpaper and one of the walls is painted pale yellow. The bedside table has no drawers and the two built in wardrobes have different types of door. There is white paint splashed over the curtains, which are held up by precariously balanced poles. But I chose the place for its location rather than its interior design, and I will only live in it for another three months. Until then, I'm following a few rules to make the most of the space.
1. Choose your room carefully
Before you start looking, decide on your priorities. Are you looking for a room in a shared house, something more self contained, or a flat? What sort of size do you want? What orientation, what location? These things you can't change, and really affect your experience of the place you live in. There is nothing you can do to increase the amount of natural light in your room and there is only so far you can go to block out sound. Everything else about your room hangs on bricks and mortar.
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| Everything is a trade-off, this room is light and airy but small (image found on Pinterest) |
2. Colour Schemes
This is where I'd usually start with designing an interior. But when you're moving around a lot it's just not practical to stick to one theme. It's unhelpful to choose a room based purely on aesthetics, so you can't plan your soft furnishings, lamps and decoration ahead of time. It gets far too expensive to replace everything every time you move, too! I go for a rule of bright primary colours, because the chances are the room will be relatively neutral, and primary colours will immediately add some life to that, but you could also go for neutral colours with a few cheap items in bronze or a bright colour that can be replaced if they really don't work with your next home.
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| Neutral patterned bedding, Anthropologie |
3. Storage
Even the most horrific of rooms look better without mess. I prefer all my possessions to be tidied away in drawers but sometimes the furniture just doesn't allow that. I've been provided with a set of shelves, so I bought a simple basket from Primark to hide all my little items inside.
Makeup can be a nightmare. If you have enough, you can buy a stacking set of drawers or boxes that can be easily packed up whenever you need to move. I have a few bottles and tubes that I need easy access to, so I bought a few enamel cooking trays from a pound shop to keep them all in place. I've also seen some great displays with charity shop cake stands or cut glass ashtrays.
There's also the constant danger of the floordrobe. Instead, I have a fabric set of hanging shelves that I've put into one of the built in wardrobes, the one with the doors I like least. I've left the doors open so it's easy to put scarves and jumpers straight onto the shelves. I find I need tidiness to be easy, or I'll let my room fall into a mess.
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| Hanging storage shelves, Ikea |
4. Decoration
There are plenty of things that you can take from place to place, that can mean home more than the room itself. My family had a picture taken of us all before I left for university, and I have that in a frame, as well as a few pieces of artwork that I love.
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| Bunting |
I've made some bunting that I have hanging up around my open wardrobe, and that adds a little fun to the room. Memories are also important to display - science shows you're actually happier surrounded by photographs of your friends! A lot of people go for a photo wall but I have a corkboard of ticket stubs, invitations and wristbands of things I want to remember that has the bonus effect of filling up a large amount of space on the yellow wall.
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| Cork board, Argos, with ticket stubs |
Plants are also important, bringing some life and colour into the room as well as purifying the air. I have two windows in my room and I've put my plants on the sills, trying to complement the main colours of that side of the room with the colour of the plants.
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| House plant |
5. Don't break anything
This rule is pretty simple. If you're not going to be living there for long it's not worth losing your deposit! Hide what you can of the things that you hate under the bed or in cupboards, and try to cover up marks on furniture rather than scrapping the piece altogether. Ask the landlord to put in picture hooks for you, or use removable sticky ones, rather than risk nailing through a cable or pipe.
6. You
The most important thing to do is to look critically at the way you live. What makes you happy in a home, and what can you do to increase the opportunity for that? I know that I can be happy with mismatched colours and furniture for a short while, so long as I have tidiness and natural light, so I promote that in my room at the expense of a harmony of style. Look at the way you live now, at your routine, and what you could do to make it easier.
If this has helped, please let me know by sharing!
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