Awkward walls and rented homes

Lath and plaster

Common in Victorian and Edwardian homes. The plaster is brittle and the thin timber laths behind it split if you force a fixing into them. Find the studs, drill a 3 mm pilot slowly with no hammer, and use a woodscrew straight into the timber. Anything hung on the plaster alone will eventually pull a cone of plaster out of the wall.

Dot-and-dab

Use a through-fixing that sleeves across the cavity and grips the blockwork, so the load never sits on the board. Fitted correctly these carry 50 kg and more, which makes dot-and-dab one of the stronger walls in the house — as long as you respect the cavity.

Tiled walls

• Mark the point with masking tape so the bit cannot skate across the glaze.
• Use a diamond or spear-point tile bit, lowest speed, no hammer, light pressure, and keep the tip cool.
• Drill in the middle of a tile, never within 15 mm of an edge or a grout line.
• Once through the tile, switch to a masonry bit and hammer action for the substrate.
• Seal the hole with a dab of silicone before inserting the plug in bathrooms and kitchens.

Chimney breasts

The masonry is often soft, uneven and warm, and there may be a live or capped flue behind it. Avoid drilling deep, keep to the outer face, and never fix into a flue liner. Heat and soot also rule out hanging valuable art directly over a working fire — the temperature swing and particulates are hard on paper and pigment.

Plaster over insulation

Internally insulated external walls — increasingly common after retrofit grants — have insulation board behind the plasterboard, sometimes 60–100 mm of it. Standard fixings simply compress the foam. These walls need long insulation-specific anchors that reach the masonry, and it is worth checking what was installed before you drill through a vapour barrier.

Most UK tenancy agreements restrict drilling, but few ban it outright — the usual wording requires the walls to be returned in their original condition. That is a repair standard, not a prohibition.

• Ask the landlord or agent in writing and keep the reply; verbal permission is worth nothing at check-out.
• Photograph each wall before you start, so pre-existing marks are not attributed to you.
• Prefer a small number of fixings over many; two clean holes are easier to make good than ten pin marks.
• Keep the fixings, the paint code and any spare filler in one bag for the end of the tenancy.
• Fill, sand and touch up before the inventory check, not after — the clerk photographs what they see.
• Adhesive strips can lift paint on their way off; test one in a wardrobe first, and warm it before peeling.

If you are near the end of a tenancy, sequence the make-good work before the clean, not after — the same order we set out in the end of tenancy cleaning guide. Filler dust settles on everything, so cleaning first is wasted money.

• Hanging height and gallery walls
• The kit you need, and what to hire instead
• The printable hanging checklist