How To Make A Rental Your Own: Master Bedroom Edition

Trying to figure out how to make a rental your own? I’m sharing all the details of how we redecorated our master bedroom in our rental.

If you’ve been following along here for a little while, you know that we bought a house last year, worked our butts off to decorate it to our liking (we were featured on Apartment Therapy!) and then wound up having to sell it due to some very unfortunate circumstances earlier this year.

So yesterday when I posted our Christmas cards, so many of you commented on our bedroom like – did you have those photos done this summer? What happened? Is that your rental bedroom?! You bet your butt it is!

There were a couple things that I did to make our rental our own and I started with the master bedroom. I’ll be the first to tell you – I’m not a huge fan of rental homes, but there is so much that can be done with the help of a few solid pointers that can make it your own without totally breaking the bank. Today I’m sharing how I made our rental our own: master bedroom edition. I hope you enjoy it!

How To Make A Rental Your Own: Master Bedroom Edition

I truly wish that I had a photo of what our room looked like on the very first day we moved into it, because it was so sad looking. What you can’t see in this photo is a very disjointed wall half wall with a cut-out closet and a door. It makes situating our dresser a challenge, but I’m just happy our king bed and two night stands fit nicely all on one wall! HALLELUJAH FOR SMALL MIRACLES!

Even though our furniture fit, I was struggling a lot with the aesthetic of the room. My bedroom is my sanctuary – a place where I can retreat each night to shut down, unwind and just relax. Needless to say – I wasn’t getting that vibe naturally in this room so I was eager to turn things around!

The very first thing that I have to admit is that I felt like initially I had very little to work with – not the greatest carpeting and a beige colored wall that made me cringe every single time I looked at it. But after assessing thing, I felt like I had a big canvas.

WALLPAPER

I knew that the walls/wall colors would be the first thing that needed to go, or at least partially go, in order for me to turn the rental room into my very own bedroom oasis. I turned to the amazing folks at Photowall to see what the could do. Anyone who knows me, knows I love me some wallpaper. Give me all the colors, patterns, shapes and designs. We’ve now installed two separate wallpaper walls and this one will forever be the easiest. AMEN.

Peel and Stick Wallpaper

I will sing the praises of their work from now until the end of the Earth, because not only do they give their customers a ton of designs to choose from (or you can request custom artwork if you don’t see something you like), but they go one step further. You send them the exact measurements of your wall and they cut it to match. That means no random extra pieces, no having to order extra yardage, no nothing! They ship EXACTLY what you need – including a wall mounting kit for you to hang it. It was installed onto our wall in a single evening and I haven’t stopped smiling since.

HEADBOARD

Another thing that I know I’ve mentioned before is that when we sold our house, the new owner bought the furniture inside. I wasn’t sad until we got our bed into our new bedroom and realized it looked so sad without the big white Pottery Barn headboard I had grown to love. I knew that adding a headboard was going to be game changer when it came to pulling the room together. I have long loved the affordability and quality of products from Wayfair, so I went searching onto their website until I found one that matched nearly identically to the nightstands we already owned. As soon as I saw this headboard, I added it to my cart. A total steal AND affordable shipping to Hawaii!

CURTAINS

Once I tackled the wallpaper, I knew that the next order of business were the vertical blinds. In short – they needed to be gone. I love the look of curtains, but the thought of removing all the vertical blinds and the hardware that is used to hang them sounded painful at best.

I knew they made a product to avoid that altogether, where the curtain rod basically hangs in front of all of it, so I invested in several sets and installed one in our bedroom. Once that was hung, I put up a curtain rod, strung some adorable pom curtains that match the throw pillow on our bed and VOILA!

I was initially skeptical of how it would look – would it look cheap or thrown together? The answer is neither! I’m so happy I went this route. I can essentially have the best of both worlds – lots of natural light during the day and then drawing the vertical blinds at night to keep out any extra light. WIN WIN!

ACCENT PIECES

I’ve always been a big lover of aerial beach shots, so framing these two beautiful prints from Claudia Chloe above our bed was a no-brainer. We live in Hawaii, but I love a muted grey and white for the bedroom, which doesn’t always scream ‘tropical beach vacation’, so I love that I’m able to draw on these photographs for that. These frames are my go-to for all framing jobs!

Print 1 | Print 2

Sadly, one of the big casualties of the past few moves have been our bedside lamps. I wanted something that was plain, but that was a little bit of an accent that matched the frames hanging above our bed. These lamps do the trick!

They are modern and bold, but basic enough to be functional. I’ll be honest – what I really love is that even if they don’t remain bedside table lamps, they can easily be incorporated into our decor in any other place in the house. This was a major selling point for me, because they weren’t on sale and cost slightly more than what I would normally pay. 

I am a huge reader (my latest book recommendations can be found here), so I always have a stack of books on my nightstand that tends to look a little cluttered. I thought these whimsical pineapple bookends from Wayfair were the perfect remedy to ease my need for both function and style. 

Rental Bedroom Decor

After I had the headboard and nightstands put together, I realized that the bed was really missing something and I couldn’t figure out why it didn’t look ”put together”. I looked at it for about a week before I realized what I could add that it was missing and that was – a bed skirt. While I was browsing in Wayfair’s section of bedskirts and bedding, I realized I should probably upgrade our mattress pad and grab a new set of sheets (plain grey – we are so wild ;)) while I was at it. Since we’ve had our king bed (nearly 5 years) we’ve been using the same two sets of sheets. I’m kind of shocked none had holes, but I was happy to upgrade a little bit and throw a new set into the mix.

I should note here that I was SHOCKED by the quality of the mattress pad I ordered compared to what I paid – it is amazing and far surpasses the one I purchased from Costco about a year ago. I have never owned a bed skirt, before so let the record show I now feel like a full fledged adult….AND I LOVE IT! It’s exactly what the room was missing. I ordered the bedskirt, mattress pad and sheets all from Wayfair – no regrets!

It’s safe to say that I feel like between a few shopping upgrades thanks to Wayfair + Photowall, combined with items that I already had in my home, I was able to take a less-than-ideal rental room and turn it into a space I genuinely feel happy going into each day. I hope these tips are helpful for anyone who is renting or who is interested in turning a room in their rental into a place that makes them happy. If there’s anything I’ve learned through this process it’s that you can truly make any space your own, regardless of the palette you’ve been given to work with!

So tell me – what are your hacks for making a space your oasis?