Dealing with Beige: Resources for Decorating Real Apartments

May 4, 2014 4:02 PM

A person may be able to get plenty of decoration inspiration from pictures of artfully distressed lofts outfitted with floating shelves and new paint and fixtures, but surely there have to be some blogs out there about decorating late 20th-century beige-fests with rules against hanging anything from the walls. Any links?
posted by northernish to Home & Garden (7 answers total)

This is sort of a recurring theme on Apartment Therapy: here are a few posts to get you started, plus I would browse through their results for the search term "rental". I read a post there just last night that suggested painting large plywood sheets and leaning them against your walls, but I can't seem to find it again. I'm not sure I recall having seen too many posts there specifically about dealing with a no-hanging policy, though.
posted by ootandaboot at 4:19 PM on May 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

I was also thinking of Apartment Therapy. Specifically their home tours, sorted by apartments: There are some definitely some real apartments, still in apartment off-white.
posted by 2bucksplus at 4:22 PM on May 4, 2014

Not blog advice, but personal experience - those Command hooks and picture hanging-things actually work pretty well.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:22 PM on May 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

I got this book from my local library when I moved into my first "longer term" apartment. It has a lot of projects that don't require permanent alterations.

The First Apartment Book: Cool Design for Small Spaces
by Kyle Schuneman

Can't link to it on my phone, but it's on Amazon.
posted by permiechickie at 7:03 PM on May 4, 2014

Beige and white are gifts. That's why you don't get blank canvases covered in awesomeness, the awesomeness comes from you. I note this because I spent forty years hating both until I realized it was my job to bring something to the party and beige/white's job just to sit there and take it when I went from a warm bohemian artist space to post-industrial garden conservatory.

Also it makes it easy to hide your illicit use of thumb tacks when you move out, by investing in a $6 tub of spackle.

I would recommend Reddit for this, particularly r/amateurroomporn. Apartment Therapy, Design Sponge, and whatever you can find under the 'interiordesign' tag on Metafilter.

Looking at those might help you better define what sort of feeling you want to have in your room, whether you want to feel at peace or like you're ready to have a party or sophisticated or just like you've got it all on the ball. And then you can go from there to figure out how to accomplish it.

You may also be interested in this old question of mine, because if you can figure out the white you're faced with you could paint an accent wall another color and plan on painting over it (three coats if it's bright) with the original. I used Sherwin William's antique white to paint over a dining room wall I had to paint due to a stain, and even though it doesn't match the other walls no one will ever know it but me. You really, really can't tell. So if it's not really beige but is in fact 'off white', there are lots of colors that fit the bill and between that and the spackle, you can get off leash pretty easily for about forty or fifty dollars, including a halfway decent brush.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 3:06 AM on May 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm going to recommend making Fabric Wallpaper and hanging it with liquid starch. This is what lots of families do in Base Housing.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 9:41 AM on May 5, 2014

If you can't make holes in the walls (which, by the way, fuck that), then get some Command Strips.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:19 AM on May 5, 2014