Why You Should Avoid Using This Wallpaper Hack In Your Apartment

Wallpaper is a great wall décor option as opposed to paint for a host of reasons. For one, it's a great way to express your personality with fun colors and patterns that are difficult and expensive to achieve with paint. Also, wallpaper can last as long as 15 years, according to 1838 Wallcoverings.

Apartment dwellers and renters don't have the same freedom of decoration, though, as many leases stipulate that you can't paint or wallpaper the walls. Wallpaper isn't easy to remove, and many landlords and leasing companies may forbid peel-and-stick wallpaper for the risk of the adhesive damaging the paint beneath.

Still, wallpaper is a great way to easily decorate your home in a way that reflects your own unique sense of style and design. The TikTok account @kaytuc has a hack that's supposedly renter-friendly, and seems perfectly safe for your walls, but could cause more issues down the road.

TikTok user @kaytuc shared a helpful tip on her account showcasing how to hang wallpaper in a non-permanent, renter-friendly way. In the video, Katie hangs floral wallpaper in her bedroom by marking out a grid using painter's tape and adding a layer of double-sided tape on top of it, and then sticking her wallpaper to the double-sided tape. Small nails are added at the top to keep it in place.

Ideally, when it's time to move, all you'll need to do is peel off the painter's tape. Since it's made to be gentle enough for your walls, this seems like a mess-free, harmless way to add some pattern and color to your apartment home via wallpaper. However, while painter's tape is more gentle than, say, masking tape, it's still an adhesive product that should not be left on your walls for any extended period of time.

Painter's tape is formulated to have a weaker adhesive and be safer to use on your walls for somewhat extended periods of time, especially when compared to duct or masking tape. However, that doesn't mean it's safe to leave up indefinitely. According to DIY Without Fear, painter's tape is meant to be removed right when the paint is dry, but no more than 14 days total.

This is because painter's tape still does have adhesive materials which, over time, can begin to damage the paint underneath. If you're using it for the previously discussed wallpaper hack, you'll still have to deal with damage to your walls anyway. Sceptape-TX explains this is because the glue in all tape adhesives gets stronger the longer it bonds to a surface. So, while it's fine to leave painter's tape up for a small amount of time, unless you only plan on having your wallpaper up for 14 days, you should skip out on this hack and find other ways to bring the colorful patterns and expression of wallpaper into your apartment rental.