We always hang pictures. In most apartments the walls have been white, so we just slap a little spackle in there before we turn in the keys and all's well. Basically I refuse to let the fact that I live in an apartment dictate how my home is decorated. In our current apartment we have holes drilled through the walls to feed cable from the living room into the two bedrooms. In one apartment we were on the first floor above an unfinished basement, so we ran the cable through the basement to the bedroom. I'll have to get colored spackle this time, cuz we have off-white wallpaper. I've found several places in the apartment where this has been done in the past, so I'm not worried about it. We also hung curtains in this apartment, which makes it feel 100 times more homey. We really only did it because there is an insulating window that goes over the window in the livingroom, trapping the blinds between the actual window and the insulator, so we had to have curtains for privacy in the winter. It makes a huge difference. We have surround sound speakers mounted on the walls, as well as shelves in just about every room. In one apartment we mounted deep shelves in the second bedroom closet for storage, since we were just using the room as an office. Again, I just refuse to be limitted in what my home will look like just because it's an apartment. We've also often hung extra towel rods in the bathroom, although we didn't need to in this apartment. I replaced the dining room chandelier with a smaller fixture, because we don't have a dining table, so having a chandelier hanging there in the open was hazardous (it sure was to the tall mover, who kept banging his head every time he came through the dining area). I've also replaced a couple light switches with nicer ones, as well as replaced the shower head with a shower massage. I even replaced the utility room door with a wood one (we have cheap assed plastic doors) so I could cut a hole in it for the cats to get at the litter box. I'll do everything possible to return the apartment to it's original shape before we move out. My only regret in this apartment is that it's wallpapered, every wall in every room, so we can't paint. We've been here 4 years, and will be here at least one more, so it's the first place where painting wouldn't have been a waste of time, and we can't. So that's a huge bummer, but we've done everything else possible to make it our own.

I’m not a designer but I think your instincts are right. If everything else is super light I agree the sofa will look too dark and heavy. I think a light, warm neutral paint would be great, and accents of blue would make that gold sofa sing. I think your existing neutral walls look okay, actually. What if you just tried painting the red accent wall a nice mid tone blue?

I like the 80's, pop art and high fashion please help?

Update. My husband took the cartridge to a plumbing supply company and the person at the service desk was not able to identify it. They weren't busy and the person spent quite awhile searching through their catalogue. In his opinion some manufacturers deliberately don't put their stamp on their product or make it easy to replace the cartridge so you need to buy a whole new tap. We'll try another plumbing supply place but I'm not hopeful. We're not confident in our ability to in stall a new tap so we'll need to get a plumber, in addition to the cost of a new tap.