2. Replace the lighting, which changes a room more than paint
Nothing makes a rented room feel more institutional than a single bare bulb overhead. It casts hard shadows, flattens everything and makes even good furniture look cheap. Lighting is also the cheapest transformation available to a tenant.
Three changes, in order of effect. First, add a fabric drum shade to the existing pendant — a $20 shade takes ninety seconds and removes the hospital feel immediately. Second, change the bulb. Most rentals come with a cold 5000K bulb; swap it for 2700K warm white, and choose a dimmable LED if the fitting allows. Bulb colour temperature affects how a room feels more than almost anything else you can buy for $8.
Third, and most important, add lamps and turn the overhead light off. Three light sources at different heights — a floor lamp in a corner, a table lamp on a side table, a small lamp on a shelf — produce the layered, pooled light that makes a space feel designed. A clip-on or plug-in wall light adds a fourth without any wiring.
For a room with no usable sockets in the right place, plug-in pendants that hook over a ceiling hook and run a cord to the wall give you overhead light exactly where you want it, with no electrician and no holes.
Do not attempt to rewire anything, change a fitting on a ceiling rose, or touch the consumer unit. In the UK that is regulated work, and everywhere it is your landlord’s responsibility. Shades, bulbs, lamps and plug-in fittings are all fair game.
Keep every original shade and bulb in the box with the rest of the fittings.