Making rooms in a rented house feel homely...top tips please

[allset]

our house has white painted walls and wooden floors, it feels really unhomely and gets messy quickly. The bathrooms particularly look awful, strange tile colours and old fashioned taps etc. We can't change anything and have v little money to thow at this. How can I make the DCs bedrooms have some character? How can I make the bathrooms nice, serene and clean feeling?

[NorkyPies]

Cushions are surpisingly cheap to buy, and loads of choice of patterns and fabrics. You can also buy paint for tiles - don't know how expensive it is, though. Landlords will sometimes pay all or some toward decorating costs.

[thisonehasalittlecar]

I used lots of wall stickers in dd's room in our old flat, they come right off without marking the paint at all, and had a matching shade for the light. At a loss what to do in our current house though as dd and ds share and all the stickery things seem to be very firmly 'boyish' or 'girlish'! Will watch this thread with interest.

[allset]

Wall stickers are a good idea, although the walls are bumpy - not sure of the actual name of this rather attractive (not) paint effect so not sure if they will stick. Also have a DS and DD sharing and feel v irritated by lack of nice unisex themes

[EttiKetti]

For unisex room, my two had it all white, with red and blue, so red/white heart bedding for DD, blue of some sort for DS, currently space invaders! Blue and red gingham bunting, red checked curtains, red gingham rug. Looked good!

[thisonehasalittlecar]

I like the sound of the red and blue, I like those colours together anyway! We had bumpy wood-chip-type stuff and the stickers stuck to it fine.

[allset]

Decorating is not really an option for us, we are not going to be here for that long and it would cost too much. Other people's houses with white walls seem calm and homely, but ours seems characterless and the rooms just look as if our things are dumped in them even though we have put pictures up etc. I can't put my finger on the difference so find it hard to know what to do to change it

[HansieMom]

You could browse thrift stores and see what you can find. Check out lamps, pictures, other wall art, small accent pieces of furniture. I have many unusual art pieces and furniture from used furniture stores, goodwill, garage and estate sales.

In my entry way, I have a table from an estate sale, mirror w curclicue iron frame from used furniture store, a $10 tall lamp from garage sale, and an Oriental red chair from a different used furniture store.

I dislike white walls. I try not to have any. Currently the only white is in the garage and I'm working on that.

[madhattershouse]

For the kids we use large posters to designate a part of the room as "theirs". We have boy/girl twins in bunkbeds and younger daughter all in same room, large posters of their favourite characters give them some comfort. We have lived in 3 houses that were rented, all bloomin white and magnolia! If I ever see magnolia walls again I will scream. Bedding is all important too, theme the kids ones to match the posters, looks good and they love it.
As for the rest of the house..no idea, we never have managed to really get a rented place looking that good, ho hum. I give myself a d-..must try harder.