As a landlord, you have every right to regulate what your tenants can do with your rental property, including the design of your units. As much as possible, you don’t want changes that would drastically affect the standard design of the unit or cause any destruction to its physical structure.

However, you should also understand that your tenants also want to feel at home even if they are simply renting from you, and one way they can do that is by adding personal design touches to somehow make the place match their style.

As a compromise, you can give your tenants some freedom to spruce the place up a bit in a damage-free way. 

Rugs

A rug adds a decorative touch to any home, and it doesn’t need any effort to install. You can just lay it out wherever you want without needing any adhesive that might destroy the surface of the floor. 

Tenants can opt for rugs with intricate patterns if they want to add a bit of texture in their interiors, or they can use dark rugs in areas where spills and stains happen often. With a wide variety of design patterns to choose from, your tenant can give their home a unique and personal touch without causing any structural changes. 

Plants

Indoor plants have been the latest craze, especially for millennial tenants. Potted plants that are suited for indoor living is a good option to give homes an injection of life. It may even provide a therapeutic ambiance that is good for your tenant’s well being. 

You can set restrictions such as not allowing plants that crawl on walls and damage the painting. 

Tabletop picture frames

Nothing makes a home more personal than adding photographs of family and friends. However, picture frames that need to be attached to walls with the use of adhesive or hung on a nail can cause damage to the wall.

When the tenant moves out, the color of the wall where a frame stayed attach for a long time would become uneven. You might need to repaint the entire room to prepare it for new tenants. 

You can allow tenants to put up photos as long as they use tabletop frames. 

Accent pieces

Decorative pieces such as cushions, ornaments, linens, or vases wouldn’t cause any damage to your property so allowing tenants to use them as decor shouldn’t be a problem. 

Light fixtures

Some tenants prefer their homes to be bright because it’s more refreshing for them. Some even prefer yellow light than white. 

Allow them to put up lamps or reading lights. If they wish to change white light bulbs to yellow ones, you can let them as long as they store the original bulbs properly so they can be returned once their lease ends.

Here’s a little tip you can consider: design your units as simple as possible so that it’s more flexible to personal design touches from tenants with varying tastes so that when you attach photos of your units on your Padleads listing, it would attract more tenants to rent because they can see that there’s room for them to personalize the place to their liking. 

When welcoming new tenants to your rental property, make them aware of the limitations you have when it comes to the design of your units and offer them these design suggestions so that damages can be prevented.