Halloween in a Rented Flat, Without Marking Anything

Pick three surfaces and decorate only those. In a small flat the limits are storage and the deposit, not floor area — so the question is never how much you can fit, but what comes down cleanly and where it lives for the other eleven months.

A house absorbs scattered decoration. A one-bedroom flat does not: the same number of objects that looks abundant in a large living room reads as mess in a small one, because there is no empty surface left to give the eye a rest.

Choose exactly three surfaces

Walk through and pick three. Write them down, and treat everything else as off limits.

The combinations that work are usually one vertical, one horizontal and one that is seen on the way in:

• The front door or the inside of it — the first thing anyone sees and the easiest to strip
• One shelf or a mantel — the detail surface, where small things earn their place
• The coffee or dining table — the one that changes with a single object
• A window — read from outside as well as in, so it does double duty

Three is enough to make a flat feel marked for the season. Five starts to look like the decorations have escaped.

Fixings that leave the wall intact

This is the part that costs money if it goes wrong, so it is worth the detail.

Removable adhesive hooks work well on smooth painted plaster, gloss, tile and glass. Three things determine whether they come off cleanly:

1. Clean the surface first with rubbing alcohol rather than a household spray. Any residue of polish or grease and the adhesive will not bond, which is why hooks fall off in the night.
2. Wait an hour before hanging anything, and ideally 24 hours before putting weight on it.
3. Pull the tab straight down, slowly, parallel to the wall. Never pull outward. Stretching it downwards is what releases the bond without lifting paint.

Where they should not go: wallpaper of any kind, paint applied within the last three or four weeks, textured or chalky plaster, and limewash. On those surfaces adhesive takes the finish with it.

Alternatives that touch nothing: tension rods inside a window reveal, over-door hooks, freestanding branches in a weighted pot, and simply standing things on the furniture you already own. A heavy pot holding a branch does more visually than six things stuck to a wall, and it leaves no trace.

The window, which does the most work

In a flat the window is usually the most valuable surface, because it is seen from the street as well as from the sofa.

Silhouettes cut from black card and taped inside the glass read strongly after dark with a lamp behind them, and they cost almost nothing. Keep the lamp low and behind the shape rather than beside it.

A string of warm-white lights along the top of the reveal gives a glow without a single fixing if you run it on a tension rod. Avoid lights that flash: in a small room, a flashing light is in your field of view all evening.

The table, where one object is enough

In a small flat the dining or coffee table is usually also the work surface, the dumping ground and the place people eat. It cannot carry an elaborate arrangement.

One object on a tray is the right scale: a bowl of small pumpkins, a group of three candles, a single carved pumpkin with a battery light. On a tray it lifts off in one movement when the table is needed, which it will be. The fuller treatment, scaled to the evening you are having, is in the centrepiece guide.

Buy for the box, not the shelf

This is the rule that separates a flat that handles seasonal decoration from one that drowns in it.

Decide on the storage first — one box, of a size that genuinely fits where you have space, on top of the wardrobe or under the bed. Anything that does not fit in it does not get bought.

That single constraint rules out most of what causes trouble: large rigid props, anything bulky and hollow, anything that cannot be folded or nested. It pushes you towards flat things, fabric, lights, and natural material that can be thrown away in November and replaced next year for very little.

Store flat where you can. A wreath on a hook inside the box lid, lights wound on card rather than knotted, card silhouettes between two sheets of stiff paper.

What to skip in a small flat

• Fog machines. In a small room with poor ventilation they set off the smoke alarm, and in a flat that is everybody’s problem.
• Anything scented in a studio. One candle is plenty when the kitchen, bed and sofa share the air.
• Large freestanding props. They have to live somewhere for eleven months.
• Fake cobweb stretched across a corner. It collects real dust within days and looks worse every evening.
• Orange plastic. In a small room there is nowhere for a bright colour to recede to.

The communal hallway question

If your front door opens onto a shared corridor, check the tenancy agreement and the building rules before hanging anything on the outside of it.

Many buildings prohibit it outright, usually for fire-safety reasons rather than aesthetic ones, and a wreath on a fire door is a common and reasonable objection. The inside face of your own door is always available, and a window is visible to far more people than a corridor is. Where a porch or a doorstep of your own does exist, the porch guide covers what survives weather and foot traffic.

The same fixing question comes round again in December, where the door material decides everything — that is worked through in the renter’s Christmas door guide. Most of what is worth putting on those three surfaces can be made in an evening from the Halloween projects guide, and all of it packs into the one box.