How to make a rental feel like your forever home

A new book by Paul Firmin, the founder of Earl of East, proves personality trumps permanence — as this Barbican flat attests

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For much of the past century, home was synonymous with ownership. But today the narrative has shifted. From London to Los Angeles, and Berlin to New York, more and more of us live in rentals, sublets and temporary homes not out of necessity but as a chosen way of life.

Renting often means living with the choices of others. A kitchen tiled decades ago, a wall painted by a previous tenant, a bathroom mirror you would never have picked - these features form the backdrop of many homes. We may not have chosen them, but they become part of our story.

With time, they might be embraced or tempered by the things we add ourselves — the objects, scents and rituals that overlay the permanent with the personal.

Home is felt as much as it is seen. Beyond furniture or decoration, it is a full sensory experience — the light that fills a room, the feeling of its fabrics and textiles, its particular sounds and the scents lingering in the air — that lends a space its atmosphere.

Even in the most neutral of rentals, a dweller's personality lends it colour and character. In rented homes, objects are what transform the impersonal into the personal. They add character to blank walls, usher personality into plain rooms and bring warmth to spaces that might otherwise feel stark. Whether it be the books and magazines that follow us from place to place or the choice of records stacked beside the player, these pieces express us, sometimes more clearly than words.

The Barbican apartment of Kim Darragon and Daniel Giacopelli shows how this negotiation plays out in practice.

A space that anchors its dwellers lightly but meaningfully through life's chapters - this is Kim and Danny's idea of home.