For fashion and lifestyle content creator Kristabel Plummer, home is more than just a place to live. It’s also her set, her canvas, and often her costar. When she found out that her landlords planned to sell the flat she shared in London’s Muswell Hill neighborhood in early 2020, she wasn’t sure what to do: Losing her lease meant losing her home, and her livelihood.

She’d lived in the North London apartment with a friend since 2014. In six years, her rent had only gone up by £50 (around $65). “Having that rent allowed me to make the most of my content creation,” she explains. “It was all very risky because I only had a little in savings, but it had all worked out.”

“I’d been very lucky,” Kristabel adds—and as she prepared to reenter the rental market, luck was what she needed most. As with most cosmopolitan capitals, London’s rental market is tense and tight. Ask around and you’ll find horror stories near and far: It’s a market known for no-fault evictions, loosely protected leases, and unregulated rents that are always on the rise. Today, a vanishingly narrow slice of Londoners can get onto the property ladder themselves. For everyone else? Forget about it.

When she began posting about her apartment search on social media, a follower reached out with a lifeline: the London Living Rent scheme. Under the program, middle-income renters can access affordable rental properties. The listings are more stable, often longer-term, and prices are benchmarked against local household income, not pegged to the value of properties in the neighborhood.

The program bases rents for two-bedroom properties at one third of the local median household income. Rents for one-bedroom apartments are 10 percent lower, and rents for all individual homes must be at least 20 percent less than their assessed market rent.

Kristabel had been informed of her landlord’s decision to sell at the end of 2019, and by February, she was deep in the classified ads without luck. When she turned to the London Living Rent Scheme she found a property where she could live alone, listed for £200 to £500 less than similar units in the area. Available rentals got swiped up quickly, so she knew she needed to act without hesitation.

“They don’t offer many details—I don’t actually know what the square footage is, and because it’s never been on sale, I don’t even know how much this place would cost to buy,” she says. “I literally had a five-minute viewing; they were painting, and they hadn’t even put the carpets in.”

“It was so quick I didn’t realize there were no white goods—I didn’t have time to take it in!” she recalls. Still, she said yes, and she moved in just as the Covid lockdown began. This proved to be a particularly difficult challenge—moving furniture while social distancing is hard enough, but Kristabel hadn’t even had time to measure the doorways. “I had an Ikea wardrobe,” she says, emphasis on had. “No, too tall!”

Finding a flat through London Living Rent meant Kristabel could afford to live more centrally than if she had rented privately through a traditional landlord, and she can feel the difference. “It wouldn’t make sense for me to move further out of the city center, as I’d probably pay the same amount, and I’m probably more social now because I’m not thinking about how I’ve got to go from Zone 4 to Zone 1,” she says. “You’ve got everything here.”

From the moment she moved in, Kristabel was back to work. She started by setting up her bookshelf, styling it just as she had in her previous rental. “It was just this corner because I was gifted a removal service,” she says. “I knew I had to do a post about that—I thought, I can just make one corner presentable.” Other partnerships with brands like Habitat and John Lewis helped round out her furniture and larger items.

When it came to decorating, Kristabel followed her instinct. She had never had such a blank canvas, and finding her taste came naturally. She started by arranging her souvenirs in the living room, like woven baskets from Saint Lucia and Mexico, as well as a straw bag from Jamaica, and she hung prints and textiles using lots of Command strips. She shopped on Black Pound Day, an initiative started to promote Black-owned businesses. “There are things from places I’ve never been to, like Uganda and Kenya—I got things from as many different cultures as possible.”

For her bedroom, Kristabel chose a softer pastel palette, which paired well with the blue tiles in the bathroom. “Pink is my favorite color,” she says. “I’ve got a pink mirror, and I just bought a pink shower curtain, too.”

Having a long-term home left space for sentimentality, too: When Kristabel’s grandmother passed away during the pandemic, she was able to honor her memory at home. “I’d buy a fridge magnet for my nan every time I went away,” she says. “It was very surreal, going to her house and choosing things to keep—I took the fridge magnets, and now I add to them myself.”

Five years on, Kristabel’s collection is still growing strong, and she’s still learning about herself as she makes a home in her rental. “I’m very resourceful, quite creative, and imaginative,” she says. “I did knitwear design at university but this is different, being creative with objects and prints, and interior design.”

And the most important lesson she’s learned from the London rental market? A few Command strips will go a long, long way.

Have you taken on an ambitious Rental Revamp—or do you know someone who has? We want to hear about it! Reach out to edit@dwell.com with photos and a brief description.

More Rental Revamp stories:

She Gave Her West Hollywood Chateau the Princess Treatment

A Bavarian Baker Overhauls Her Kitchen in a 300-Year-Old Farmhouse

The Maximalist Magic of Josh & Matt’s Melbourne Home

Project Credits:

Interior Design: Kristabel Plummer / @iamkristabel

Appears In

Rental Revamp: How a Creator Found a Flat in London’s Tight Housing Market—and Made It Her Own