Alternative to painting walls and applying wallpaper to spruce up a boring room?
Question:The landlord isn't allowing us to paint our walls or apply wallpaper, so we're stuck with white. I got neutral grey curtains thinking that I'd be allowed to paint the walls, unfortunately, so the room has an icy feel to it.
I was hoping to paint the walls sea green and blue, so are there any good alternatives that are also cost efficient?
Answers:
Buy nail sockets from any supermarket. They're dirt cheap. Nail the sockets in all around your room. Now you can use these sockets as hangers (ish) . You can:
1) Hang threads from them, adorned with pictures or Cds or anything.
2) Take upholstery or cloth of any kind and sting it on multiple sockets, hence draping your wall with a colour. Then you can customize the upholstery or cloth as to your liking. My suggestion? Get white cloths and then paint on it.
3) Use the nail sockets to hang up pictures, frames, posters or anything that can be wall adorned.
These are only a few ideas. If you've got a lot of spare blank wall then nail sockets for walls are extremely cheap and easy to set up.
Another thing you can do is set up curtains in the middle of your walls. Get 'brackets' and install them apart from each other on your wall and you can set up any curtain anywhere.
Glad to help.
Wall hangings such as tapestry are one possibility. Another is large floor standing or wall mounted furniture such as curio displays and shelving.
Add color with bright pillow cushions ( I also recommend changing curtains) and hang favorite photos on the walls. Use warm colors, like reds and oranges on simple accessories like having the pillows, curtains, kitchen table cloth all play off each other. Also, try some bright flowers in a vase.
I used to live in base housing & always had this problem. We used to get borders & would pin them up with thumb tacks that matched the border. Any little holes can be spackled when you move out.
still go with your sea-green, blue theme, just use framed prints, making a big statement with rather large prints, try Matisse, he has some beautiful colorful prints that you can have framed and matted really cheap, and pillows and accessories that bring out the green-blue and put some red spashes in to because red is very comlimentary to the green and blue> Work it babe, use your imagination
i saw something on "design on a dime" where the renter had a similar situation. the team built her 3 panels (they looked 6 feet by 4 feet wide) and they leaned against the wall - no nails. i think a couch was placed in front for extra stability. the panels added color and light to the room because they were each fitted with 1 large round light and the wires were hidden behind the wood
The most inexpensive solution is to dye the grey curtains.
There are some catalogs for dorm students that might give you inspiration.
You could hang large organizers up (some are as long as your wall) and put the same repetitious item in it, like cd's, collectibles, magazines, tile flooring, cut wallpaper, anything flat basically that is colored.
There are large rolls of clear plastic available at stores like Wal Mart for you to make your own making pockets with sewing or a glue for vinyl. You can always hang a big rod with fabric on it from ceiling to floor.
Room dividers add contrast, they come with removable panels for photos but you could just add color.
I hope these suggestions help, if not you could always look at some other dorm or similar magazines for further inspiration.
Since your landlord won't let you paint the walls or apply wallpaper, I suggest that you buy some paintings/pictures and hang them up. TJ Maxx is a great place to go to for paintings/pictures, they can have really beautiful artwork there for reasonable prices. If you don't find anything you like at TJ Maxx, you could also go to your local pictures and paintings store. Sea green and blue are most often found in paintings and pictures of lakes, oceans, and seas. So you could look for paintings of that nature. Also, if you yourself have a photo with those colors, you could have the picture blown up to make it a good sized picture to frame and hang on your wall. If you aren't allowed to hang any pictures or paintings up, I suggest (while not spending too much) on maybe buying some sea green and blue decorative pillows for your couch, higher-watt lightbulbs if your room is quite dark right now from the dim lights, a blue and/or green rug to put underneath a coffee table, and maybe buying a shade of green or blue curtains. Also try introducting the warm and neutral colors to the room like beige, light brown, and off-white. Getting rid of gray and black colors in the room will provide less of an icy feel to it. Just by changing the little things, you can definitely brighten up the room and make it have a more warm and welcoming feeling for yourself and other guests when they come over. Have fun with it, and good luck =).
find a fabric that you like, liquid starch which is pre-mixed, or buy the kind you have to mix yourself, and follow the package instructions. Put the starch in a tub, large bowl or wallpaper trough.
Measure and cut the first strip that you will hang. It should be the width of the cloth, and the length of the wall, adding a couple of inches to the length, in case needed. If the material has a particular pattern, you might need to add even more in the length so that the pattern can be aligned properly. Dip the fabric into the starch, but don’t squeeze the liquid out, as squeezing wrinkles the fabric. One way to get some of the dripping liquid out is to have someone hold the piece of cloth over the tub while you place your hands together with one hand on each side of the fabric. Run your hands down the fabric, go back to the top and do it again, repeating the step for the width of the fabric.
Place the fabric on the wall and smooth out with a straight edge, like a plastic putty knife. A sponge will also help you smooth any wrinkles or bubbles out of the cloth, while absorbing some of the liquid. After the first piece is on, repeat the steps to hang the next piece, and so forth. It’s helpful to continue to wipe the bottoms of the previous pieces every few minutes, since this is where the liquid will naturally accumulate. Since starch doesn’t generally ruin many surfaces, you can easily wipe off drips on woodwork with a wet washcloth.
When you’re ready to launder the wall fabric, or you just want to change the look for a new season, just pick at the fabric in a corner until it will raise up, then pull the piece from the wall. Launder, re-dip and re-hang when ready. After you’ve cut a few different types of cloth to fit your walls, you can change the look of the room in under a day.
I collected a billion sand dollars off the beach and cleaned them in my dishwasher. Then, I dyed them like Easter eggs in hot water and food coloring, very faint mauves and sage green. Then, I used teeny-tiny skinny nails that leave holes easily painted over and arranged the dried sand dollars (they have little holes in the back of them to hang on the nail heads) on the wall in a huge, elegant swirling, botanical pattern. Turned out amazingly beautiful.
Ikea has tracks you can attach to the ceiling, then from the track you hang Ikea curtain panels in many different designs/colors. It's a cool alternative to painting. the panels are light weight, some are opaque.
Here's the link for the panels
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/catego...
Heres the link for the rail system:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/produc...
Accessories are your friend in this situation. If you can, return the curtains you bought and get a warmer color. Red, brown, blue, green - any color you feel can work with your existing furniture. You'll want to get an area rug to incorporate this color as well (even if you have carpeting). Pillows (and throws in cooler weather).
Vases, lamps and other decorative accessories should also have color.
Check out places like Target, Pier 1, Home Goods (if you have by you). Look for sales and clearance items, although Target and Home Goods usually have good prices.
If you can't hang things on the walls, check out Wallies and Wonderful Graffiti. Easily removable when you are ready to move on.
http://www.wallies.com/
http://secure.wonderfulgraffiti.com/...
http://www.rentaldecorating.com/walldeco... has a lot of great tips. I would suggest a couple of large paintings on the wall in the same sorta colors you were planning on painting. Or you can do a series of black and white photographs, which would look great, but then you would need some color in the room to make everything pop.
I have the same problem, and I found these easy on, easy off wall stickers that are perfect for bringing out some color in a room. I'd say, those, plus wall hangings and plenty of colorful photography would help. If it's a bedroom, make sure the bed set has a lot of color too.
put some pictures up
You can buy a sheer fabric for cheap and hang up with thumb tacks... Tulle is very inexpensive, and if you use blues and greens, and teals, when you overlap them, they make other shades. Tulle, at Walmart, is less than $1.00 a yard. Add lots of large pillows on the floor to soften and add more color.
You could go to a fabric store and pick out a favorite pattern of color. You can either staple it up on the wall, or you can use liquid starch to paste it on the wall.
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