Rental Friendly
A Flat You Are Not Allowed to Change
Damp, cold, no storage and no permission to drill. Which of those is actually your problem, and which page deals with it — before you buy anything.
Contents
Most of what makes a rented flat unpleasant falls into four problems, and the products sold for them are frequently aimed at the wrong one. Before buying anything, work out which of these you actually have — the answers are genuinely different.
A note on this guide: this rests on how air, moisture and adhesion behave in a building, and on manufacturers' stated conditions for the products involved, not on flats measured here. See how we test.
Start here: which problem is it?
| What you notice | What it usually is | Where it is answered |
|---|---|---|
| A cold band across the floor | Air coming in, usually at the front door | Draught-proofing a rented flat |
| Cold that feels like a draught near a window | Cold glass, not moving air | Draught-proofing a rented flat |
| Nothing stays on the wall | The surface, not the hook | Hanging things without drilling |
| A musty cupboard | Still air against a cold wall | Storing things in a damp cupboard |
| Laundry taking two days | Water with nowhere to go | Laundry with nowhere to dry it |
| A shower screen that never looks clean | Deposit, or etched glass | Hard water marks on glass |
| Clean washing that smells | Biofilm, being fed | Getting the smell out of a washing machine |
| Grout going black again weeks after cleaning | Porous cement, never sealed | Cleaning grout without wrecking it |
| Nowhere to put anything | Unused vertical space | A narrow gap is storage you already own |
Cold, and where it comes from
The window is the usual suspect and frequently innocent. Air enters where there are holes — under the front door, through the letterbox and keyhole, at a loft hatch, behind skirting, and where pipes pass through walls.
Separately, cold glass chills the air touching it, which then falls and crosses the floor. It feels identical to a draught and sealing the frame does nothing for it.
Ten minutes with a lit candle distinguishes the two and decides what is worth buying. Draught-proofing a rented flat covers the survey and the fixes, including the vents that must not be blocked.
Walls you cannot drill
Adhesive hooks fail on the surface far more often than on the weight. Texture, gloss, vinyl silk, wallpaper and freshly painted walls all give an adhesive a fraction of what the rating assumed — and fresh emulsion can come away with the hook.
Hanging things without drilling covers what to check before buying, and adhesive hooks vs tension rods settles which method suits which load. The short version: adhesive goes where a rod cannot, and a rod holds what adhesive cannot.
Damp, in three different forms
They look similar and need different responses.
Condensation in a room is a ventilation problem, and drying laundry indoors is the largest source in most flats — laundry with nowhere to dry it.
Condensation in a cupboard is a still-air problem, usually solved by clearance and an open door before anything is bought — storing things in a damp cupboard.
A wall that is wet rather than damp — worse at the bottom, worse after rain — is a building fault. That one is reported, not absorbed.
Storage, in a flat that has none
The storage you already own is vertical and narrow: the slot beside the fridge, the air above every stack of plates, the space under the bed.
- A narrow gap is storage you already own — the gaps and the cupboard height nobody uses
- Under-bed storage you actually use — why the space stays empty, and it is access rather than size
- Vacuum bags: what they do and do not save — volume on soft things, nothing else
- Labelling storage you will keep using — why every system dies after six weeks
Cleaning problems that are chemistry
Four of the most common household complaints are not cleaning failures at all.
Limescale dissolves; scrubbing it damages the surface and makes the next deposit form faster — descaling a kettle and a shower head.
A cloudy shower screen is either deposit or etched glass, and a ten-minute test tells you which before you spend anything — hard water marks on glass.
Grout that goes dark again weeks after cleaning is porous cement that was never sealed, and bleach whitens the staining rather than removing it — cleaning grout without wrecking it.
A washing machine that smells is biofilm being fed by cold washes and too much detergent. Removing it without changing the conditions buys about six weeks — getting the smell out of a washing machine.
The deposit, which is the quiet cost
Two things account for most of it and both are prevented for very little on the first day rather than remedied on the last:
Floors. Furniture legs mark a floor over a year without being dragged once, and a rug that slides is worse than the floor it covers — covering a rental floor you cannot change.
Removal technique. Adhesive pulled outward takes paint; pulled slowly and straight down it does not. That single detail is the difference between damage-free and a repainting charge.
What is not yours to fix
Worth stating plainly, because the instinct in a rented flat is to quietly deal with everything.
A rotten frame, an extractor that no longer extracts, a door that will not close, and a wall that is wet rather than condensing are all repairs. Sealing over any of them transfers the problem to you, and it continues getting worse out of sight.
Questions people actually ask
What should I fix first in a cold, damp rented flat?
Which of these problems are actually the landlord's?
Is damp always a ventilation problem?
Where do renters most often lose a deposit?
Is any of this worth doing in a one-year tenancy?
Question this page did not answer? Ask it.