The Block's Shaynna Blaze shares the five easy styling tips every renter needs to know about.

Between white walls, grey/brown carpets and plain tiles, most rental houses are taking the design aesthetic of “classic investment property blandness.”

So how can you add style without breaking the lease?

Easily, says Shaynna Blaze. The property design expert, host of Selling Houses Australia and judge on The Block spends her life snooping through people’s drab homes and pointing out how crap they are. She’s seen it all. And she told us on the Can’t Live Without podcast that there’s plenty of temporary solutions to make your home feel less like a cellblock…and more like The Block.
Listen here:

From privacy screens to lush chairs, here’s her top advice for styling up your rental:

1. Become a Screen Queen

A photo posted by Rebecca Williams (@sugarshack_styling_co) on Jul 14, 2016 at 3:53pm PDT

Oh yeahhhhh. Privacy screens, Shaynna says, are the best tool for temporary decorating. They can be used to make a bedhead, as a wall feature, or to hang artwork from.  They can hide a bad window or other unsightly areas, and divide a room to create privacy. I screen, you screen, we all screen for privacy screens.

2. Get a great floor lamp and shine all day.

A photo posted by vogueliving (@vogueliving) on Jul 26, 2016 at 12:35am PDT

A big arse lamp can really draw the eye away from other areas of the room. And Shayyna says if you pair it with the above privacy screen, and a big comfy chair – hey presto – you’ve created a “corner”. A nook of one’s own. Stylish.

3. Cushions are your bestie

A photo posted by freedom australia (@freedom_australia) on Jul 31, 2016 at 5:48pm PDT

The key to the effortless cushion styling isn’t spending days finding the perfect trio of matchy-matchy squares that blend with the couch. It’s TEXTURE. Look for different knits and fibres and mix it up the shapes and sizes, you crazy cushion cat.

4. Cut a rug

A photo posted by Domayne Australia (@domayne_australia) on May 4, 2016 at 11:42pm PDT

Whether you’re dealing with well-worn carpet or cold lino, a rug can do a lot of hard work for you in a rental.  It brings texture and colour to a room, is a delight under foot, and can roll up and go with you to your next house, so it’s worth investing in something you love.

5. Don’t skimp on the chairs

A photo posted by Anders Norge (@norgesretroogdesign) on Oct 11, 2016 at 2:06pm PDT

It’s so easy to just head to ye olde Ikea and get thee a stool or ten, but Shaynna says sometimes if you look around, it’s worth investing in pieces with good bones that you can revive by getting re-covered. The design queen bought some chairs she was obsessed with, has spent the last few decades looking at them, and is about to have them re-covered and updated in a more modern fabric so she can enjoy them again. These chairs, she says, will go to her children next. And they’ll have them re-covered too, and the chairs shall live on until generations of butts have cosied up in them.

So many tips.

The full podcast is here, where we shamelessly ask her a hundred design questions. She also tells us why she looks in people’s cupboards, whether she secretly judges her friends houses when they invite her over for dinner, and her worst design regret ever. Yep, even she’s had a shocker.

Listen in itunes, in the Mamamia podcast app, or here: