For a generation of renters, the instinct has always been the same: keep things light, keep things temporary, do nothing that might cost you your deposit or invite conflict at the end of a tenancy. That instinct is changing. Fast.
A piece published this week by the BBC, drawing on advice from B&Q chief executive Graham Bell and interior designers Lara Clarke and Lydia Lloyd, offered a practical guide to making a rented property feel genuinely like home. On the surface, it reads as lifestyle content. Look at the backdrop against which it appears, and it becomes something more revealing: a small cultural signal of a very large structural shift.
The context matters enormously. The Renters’ Rights Act came into effect on 1 May 2026, giving renters stronger rights and better protections across England. Among its most significant changes, Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions have been abolished, rent increases can be challenged, and fixed-term tenancies have been replaced with rolling arrangements. Notice periods have been doubled from two to four months, and landlords must now provide valid grounds to seek possession.
This is not merely a legal change. For the average renter, it is a psychological one. The feeling of precarity that has defined private renting for decades, the sense that you could be asked to leave with minimal notice and no explanation, has been formally dismantled. And when people feel they can stay, they start to act like it.
Already, 19 per cent of renters say they are more likely to remain in their current property as a result of the Act’s changes. Research carried out in May 2026 found that 62 per cent of renters believe the Renters’ Rights Act improves their housing protections and conditions, almost double the figure recorded in October. That is a meaningful shift in sentiment, and it has practical consequences for how people choose to live in the properties they rent.
The BBC’s guidance, delivered in part by Bell, is pitched squarely at the renter who has finally decided to commit to a space rather than merely occupy it. The advice is precise and grounded. Check your tenancy agreement before altering anything. Many landlords, Bell noted, may be open to sensible improvements, particularly upgrades rather than fundamental changes, but getting permission first avoids any expensive dispute when you move out.
Planning, he stressed, is everything. Recent figures show that renters in the UK are now spending around 36.1 per cent of their average earnings on rent, the highest level recorded. At that cost, every pound spent on a property needs to work hard, which makes the emphasis on reversible, portable changes so apt. Bell recommended renter-friendly products, stick-on tiles for the kitchen, suction storage solutions in the bathroom, expandable blinds fitted without drilling, and encouraged tenants to focus on changes they can take with them when they eventually move.
Interior designer Clarke made a compelling case for artwork. It is, she argued, probably the easiest way to make a rental feel more homely, because it instantly makes a space feel more occupied and finished. Her suggestion, affordable vintage oil paintings, exhibition posters, or framed sketches sourced from antique markets and fixed with command strips, carries both aesthetic and practical wisdom. The work comes with you. The walls stay pristine. The deposit stays intact.
Perhaps the most transferable of all the advice concerned lighting. Bell observed that rental properties typically arrive with bright, flat overhead lighting that does little to create atmosphere. Swapping bulbs for warmer tones, or adding strip lighting in a kitchen, can change the feel of an entire room without touching a single fixture in any permanent way.
Clarke took this further, arguing against reliance on a single overhead light source entirely. Layering light from different points around the room, through table lamps, floor lamps and battery-powered options that require no fixed wiring, creates the sense of cosiness and settledness that makes a space feel like somewhere you actually want to be. Paired with floor-to-ceiling curtains and soft furnishings, the effect is considerable. None of it requires a landlord’s permission. None of it puts a deposit at risk.
This kind of advice carries special weight in a market where rental supply remains roughly 25 per cent below pre-pandemic levels nationally, and rental inflation in three quarters of the country is running ahead of the 2.1 per cent national average. When moving is expensive, difficult, and emotionally costly, the ability to genuinely inhabit the property you are in becomes both a financial and a wellbeing priority.
This is where the national story connects directly with what we are seeing across Norfolk and Suffolk. The rental market here shares the same underlying pressures as the rest of England, elevated mortgage rates keeping would-be buyers in rental accommodation for longer, a constrained supply of homes to let, and the steady psychological recalibration now underway following the Renters’ Rights Act.
Average earnings are growing at around 4 per cent, almost twice as fast as the growth in rents nationally, which offers some affordability relief for renters in full-time work. But the average two-year fixed-rate mortgage deal stood at 5.61 per cent as of 18 August, a level that continues to put conventional homeownership well beyond the reach of many households in this region. Buying remains, for a significant cohort, simply not an option in the near term.
The consequence is that renters across Norfolk and Suffolk are spending longer in properties that, until recently, they may have treated as temporary arrangements. The motivation to invest time, energy, and a modest budget into making those spaces feel genuinely personal has never been greater. Advice like that offered in the BBC piece is not abstract lifestyle content for this audience. It is practical guidance for the way a large portion of the local population is actually living.
The same legislative backdrop that has emboldened tenants is also reshaping the calculations of landlords. Some 45 per cent of renters are concerned about the long-term impact of the Renters’ Rights Act on rental supply and costs, with the same proportion worried the reforms could lead to landlords leaving the market. There are already roughly 25 per cent fewer homes available to rent than before the pandemic, and a series of policy changes, including the removal of full mortgage interest tax relief, a higher stamp duty surcharge on additional property purchases, and the new tenancy rules under the Renters’ Rights Act, have combined to push some landlords out of the sector.
Bell’s guidance that landlords may be open to sensible improvements, provided tenants ask first, is well-judged in this environment. A tenant who improves a property carefully, who asks permission, who treats the space with genuine care, is exactly the kind of tenant a remaining landlord wants to retain. As tenants gain greater flexibility to leave with two months’ notice under the new rules, resident experience becomes a bigger part of building trust and keeping good tenants for longer. The interest in making a rented property feel like home is, from the landlord’s perspective, not a nuisance. It is an asset.
There is something worth reading carefully into the fact that a major DIY retailer’s chief executive is now explicitly addressing the renter market. B&Q is the UK’s leading home improvement and garden living retailer, with over 300 stores. The company does not give prominent airtime to a particular customer segment without good commercial reason. When Bell talks about renter-friendly products and the planning mindset required to transform a rental, he is describing a market that has grown large enough to command serious strategic attention.
Most analysts expect full-year 2026 rental growth in the 2 to 3.5 per cent range, with some forecasters projecting cumulative rental growth of around 12 per cent through to 2030. If that trajectory holds, the population of long-term renters in England will only deepen. The practical, psychological, and financial case for making a rented space feel genuinely like home will intensify with it.
For those of us watching property closely across Norfolk and Suffolk, the shift is already visible, not in dramatic statistics, but in the quieter evidence of how people are choosing to live. Tenants are making decisions, cautious, reversible, thoughtful ones, that signal they intend to stay. That is a meaningful change. And the market, from retailers to landlords to letting agents, is beginning to respond to it in kind.
