Challenges of Apartment Living - Part 1: White Walls

When I moved to my current city a couple of years ago, my partner and I decided not to buy a house.  We knew we'd be here for less than ten years, that our incomes would be very low, and had no idea how far the rapidly self-destructing economy would fall and what effect it would have on our lives.

We checked out apartments online, found an apparently nice and mysteriously inexpensive two-bedroom in a great location, and sent my brother to check it out while he was on a business trip in the area.  He did not have nice things to say. "It's two hundred years old--AND LOOKS IT" (only now do I understand how that might not be a compliment.)  "It has a wooden fire escape.  Do you really want to live in a place built by imbeciles?"  "I don't think it's been cleaned since the Emancipation Proclamation" (Bad joke, bro!).  Despite my brother's naysaying, we rented the apartment, have learned to love it, have made it a home, and plan to be here for many more years.

But there are many drawbacks to apartment living, not the least of which are aesthetic.  There are many design roadblocks when it comes to renting, but the most famous and one of the most perpetually frustrating must be white walls.  Even though our property managers know we'll be here for years, they still enforce a strict white walls policy.  Here are some tactics for bringing color to an apartment without painting.


1. Epic artwork.  Several months ago, my sweetie and I visited our favorite used furniture shop.  In a back room we found the most epic wall-hanging I've seen outside of a museum.  It was a ten feet tall, six feet wide union poster with a low-light, low-contrast photo of a worker at a welding machine (sparks flying) with a stark white headline reading "WE ARE WORKING".  I tingled with the thought of the monstrous masterpiece hanging in my home office!  And our ceilings are actually tall enough to accommodate it!  Holy smokes!  I get goosebumps just remembering it.  We ran to the shop clerk and begged for a price, but there was no price.  They didn't feel like selling it.  We gave them our phone number and asked that if they ever decided to sell it, they call us first.  That day, we opted for a somewhat less epic, but still large and interesting piece: this World War II propaganda poster.  It cost $15, is 3'x4', and along with a cabinet takes up all the visual room on a boring white wall in our living room.  I recognize that union and war propaganda posters are not everyone's idea of appealing home decor, but the take-away message here is large-scale artwork in colors you find more attractive than white.

2. Bright textiles.  Textiles can also be a nice way of brightening a room without painting.  Using a significant amount of color in your furniture and accessories will make the white walls seem like a backdrop for pizazz, not an oppressive blankness.  Curtains break up the white on a wall and highlight the vibrancy of the outdoors.  You could also try covering a canvas with a swath of an attractive textile, as How About Orange describes here. 

3. Temporary Wallpaper.  If you can afford it, and still don't mind paying for it, several lines of temporary wallpaper have sprung up in the past several years.  They're self-adhesive and supposedly easily removable and repositionable.  I've never used it personally, so I can't verify just how easily removable it is (I'm a bit skeptical.)  My mom has used wall-decals made of similar materials with disastrously permanent results.  Many available patterns are very attractive, so if the idea interests you, do some more research.

4. Paint. Yep, I mean actually painting your walls.  Lots of landlords are very open to this idea, sometimes with the stipulation that it's a neutral color or that you'll repaint it white upon moving out.  It doesn't hurt to ask!

5. Embrace it!  Does it shock you, dear fellow renter, that some homeowners actually paint their own walls white?  Benita, the superwoman over at Chez Larsson, has created a gorgeous and incredibly livable home centered on the Scandinavian simplicity of white. She shows that white isn't just for extreme minimalists and college dorm rooms, but is also elegantly restrained, easy to clean, and beautiful.