The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025, and its first phase of reforms came into force on 1 May 2026. Evictions, rent increases, pets: the Act rewrote the terms of private renting in England more fundamentally than any legislation in more than 35 years. The one thing it did not touch is the colour of your walls.
Decoration was left entirely to contract. Tenancy agreements can still restrict painting and alterations, and most do. Making a decorating change without the landlord’s written consent is a breach. Paint a room without permission and the landlord can deduct the cost of repainting from your deposit. In London, professional repainting typically runs to £150 to £300 a room. Do two rooms on a whim and you have lost most of a deposit before the argument even starts.
No statutory rule requires a landlord to repaint on any schedule, and tenants carry full responsibility for redecorating done without approval, plus any damage beyond normal wear and tear. The Act created no exception. A tenant with strong new security of tenure and a no-fault eviction ban in place is still legally bound to live with whatever shade of white, cream or light grey the landlord chose at the last changeover, or to ask nicely.
That gap sits at the centre of what England’s private renters, 11 million people across 2.3 million landlords, are now navigating. The private rented sector is one of the largest tenures in the country. [VERIFY 4.7m households / 19% / “second largest”] The Act gave those tenants meaningful new protections. It gave them nothing new on paint.
The instinct behind the commissioned story this piece replaced, that landlords are cracking down and tenants pushing back, turns out to be the wrong way around. OSB Group’s Bricks to Belonging report, produced with consumer psychologists IB and published in late 2024, found that 73% of landlords say they are open to tenants personalising their spaces, including painting walls, mounting artwork and changing kitchen aesthetics. The report also found that where personalisation is off the table, tenants are more likely to look for somewhere else. That is a commercial argument for flexibility, and it lands differently now that longer tenancies are the default.
The picture inside that 73% is worth reading carefully, since the sample size and methodology were not published. Of those open to personalisation, the report says 50% ask tenants to cover decoration costs, 50% expect tenants to pay for resulting damage, 34% approve decoration plans jointly, and 20% help select tradespeople. [VERIFY all four sub-figures] Open does not mean unconditional. Landlords have not given up the preference for white, cream and light grey, neutrals that attract the next tenant and keep repainting cheap. Bold colours are almost always refused.
Interior designers and show-home stagers see it differently. Cool grey, the dominant rental neutral for most of a decade, is now treated as dated for 2026, with warm earth tones and colour drenching in soft taupe moving into new-build staging. The distance between what is fashionable and what landlords will sign off has rarely been wider.
What the Act did change is the negotiating context. If longer tenancies are now the commercial norm, a tenant who raises decoration in writing, before signing or at renewal, is doing so in a market that is, on its own data, more receptive than it was. The legal right does not exist. The conversation does. Get it in writing before you open the tin.
