How to Decorate a Small Rental House With Low Ceilings

When it comes to decorating a rental house, sometimes you have to work with what you get. For example, should you have a small rental house with low ceilings, you will definitely have some challenges. Property owners will dictate painting, you will not be able to install anything substantial, and low ceilings are just low...and dark. Still, there are plenty of things you can do to make your rental home look fabulous.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

1. Brighten up the home. If possible, repaint the home in a light, bright color that will reflect light. Stick to pale pastel colors and avoid darker tints. Basically, the colors should be on the lighter side of neutral. Consider painting the room in a vertical stripe, which will make the room appear taller.

2. Use your fabric in the very same way as you use the paint. Choose a bright, light colored fabric to hang the full length of your windowed walls. Once again, vertical stripes would be most ideal. Don't fit the curtains to the size of the windows, but instead cover the whole wall from side-to-side and ceiling to floor.

3. Hang long narrow pieces of painted art canvas or banners on the walls of your low-ceilinged rooms. You can paint this yourself in a color that will brighten the room (especially if you are not allowed to paint the walls). These can be solid in color or you can stencil a simple pattern down the center.

4. 

   Once you have added color to your walls and brightened up the walls of the home, you will need to add artificial sources of light to the room. Since you have low ceilings, it makes sense to use tall light sources to fool the eye and make the ceilings feel taller. Torchiere floor lamps would be ideal.

5. Now that your rental home is bright and you have an illusion of height, you need to continue with that theme. Use tall bookshelves, lean a simple ladder against the wall as decoration. Add a tall vase, with tall foliage. You should be picking up a theme by now...think tall. This will bring the eye upward and make the ceiling seem not quite so low.