Said It Here

How to cover a rental bathroom floor without losing your deposit

Any updates to a rental floor must be completely reversible so you can put it back to normal before moving out. Popular temporary fixes like peel-and-stick tiles leave behind a glue residue that damages the underlying floor. This resulting damage can cost you your entire damage deposit to replace the floor.

Overview
People affected3 accounts across 1 forum
Workarounds found3 items attempted
Community agreement5 total upvotes

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

Found another way around this?

Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.

  1. 1
    Using loose-laid sheet vinyl instead of peel and stick tiles
    Did this help you?
  2. 2
    Deep cleaning or scrubbing the existing grout
    Did this help you?
  3. 3
    using touch up pens or wax to blend the damage
    Did this help you?

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/Flooring3 people · September 2026 – October 2026

“Got a free couch of my parents and it destroyed my floor, now I’m worried I won’t get my damage deposit back. Any advice on how to fix the vinyl floor?”source ↗

BonoboApe14 · r/Flooring · 2 upvotes

“we can only change what we can put back to normal if she were to move out. They aren’t going to do anything about this.”source ↗

MillennialFinalBoss · r/Flooring · 1 upvotes

“Dont do peel and stick,youll end up buying the whole floor.”source ↗

Feisty-Soil-9084 · r/Flooring · 1 upvotes

“Peel and stick would leave glue residue”source ↗

Feisty-Soil-9084 · r/Flooring · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised