Two roommates turned a high school sticker collection into the coolest apartment wall decor you'll see

Living Two roommates turned a high school sticker collection into the coolest apartment wall decor you'll see Collage of five hundred photos of miscellaneous signs. Joe_Potato/Getty Images/iStockphoto Jacob Bergstrom, 23, and Bradon Soucy, 22, are lifelong friends who moved into an apartment together in southern Connecticut. Like a lot of recent graduates exploring apartment decorating ideas, they wanted to make the place feel like theirs. They just took it further than most people would. It started with a leftover pack of meme stickers Bergstrom had saved from high school. 'Something just clicked in our head that we should use this lot of leftover stickers I had to do something fun,' Bergstrom told People. That small spark turned into a much bigger challenge: cover every wall in the apartment. 'We're a couple of dumb college graduates, trying to sticker bomb our entire apartment. Why? Well, Aristotle once said, 'We are what we do repeatedly. Excellence, then, is a habit, not an action,'' the roommates wrote on their website. They documented the whole process as @apt_bombers on TikTok and Instagram, placing removable wall sticker decals one by one on camera. By February 2026, they had used more than 7,000 stickers. They ultimately finished covering the apartment in June 2026, roughly 100 video updates later. Follower donations and a sponsorship from Sticker Savages helped keep the project funded. Some of the videos went viral along the way. One Instagram clip captioned 'freewillmaxxing' has more than 667,000 views as of Sept. 8, and the pair accumulated more than 2,500 followers across both platforms. The cleverest sticker wall trick is what's underneath all those decals Here's the part that makes this more than just a wild wall stickers decor project. Bergstrom and Soucy did not stick thousands of decals directly to their walls. Instead they covered every surface with rolls of construction paper attached using removable adhesive strips. The stickers went on top of the paper, not the paint. Bergstrom acknowledged to People that the extra step was 'challenging and time-consuming,' but said it was what made the decoration renter-friendly. Deposit concerns became a recurring theme in the comments. 'Most of our comments are about us losing our deposit or about how much damage we are causing, but we really aren't causing any damage because of the paper we put down,' Bergstrom said. Instead of trusting thousands of individual adhesives to come off cleanly months later, they created a removable layer between the decoration and the landlord's wall. And you don't need to go full sticker wall to borrow that idea. A child's sticker collage, a set of travel decals or a sports logo collection could cover a single construction-paper-backed section for a more contained version of the same wall decor ideas. 'Peel-and-stick' doesn't automatically mean damage-free Products marketed as removable still interact directly with paint, drywall and whatever finish sits underneath them. Interior designer Sarah Barnard told Apartment Therapy that peel-and-stick products can damage painted surfaces, especially matte and flat finishes. She noted there's always the possibility of damage and necessary drywall repair after removal. DIY expert Stefanie Bloom told Apartment Therapy that some acrylic-based peel-and-stick adhesives grow stronger the longer they stay on the wall. She had seen long-term installations become substantially harder to remove. That's exactly the kind of uncertainty that should make renters check their lease or ask their landlord before covering a large area with any adhesive product, whether it's DIY wallpaper or a sheet of removable decals. The roommates' paper barrier sidesteps that risk because the stickers adhere to a sacrificial surface rather than to the painted wall itself. Stickers, wallpaper and 3D panels are all solving the same renter problem Renters today have more ways than ever to transform a blank wall without traditional construction: removable wallpaper, decals, sticker collages, temporary murals and 3D wall panels. But the more convincing these temporary transformations become, the easier it is to assume the word 'removable' guarantees a clean removal. It doesn't always. The sticker wall apartment shows another approach. Rather than searching for an adhesive you trust completely, put something removable between the adhesive and the wall. That method won't work for everything. Heavier 3D panels may need stronger adhesive or mechanical fasteners. But the same question applies before any installation: what exactly will touch the landlord's wall, and what happens when it comes back off? For someone who wants texture, 3D wall panels create a more architectural look. For someone who wants something cheaper, more personal and potentially much more chaotic, Bergstrom and Soucy proved that a sticker wall can make just as dramatic a transformation. 'We are considered grown-ups now, but we can do something like this outside of our jobs because we aren't taking life too seriously,' Bergstrom told People. You don't need 7,000 stickers to steal the idea. A single wall, a roll of construction paper and whatever your kid (or your inner kid) currently loves could create an accent wall that feels completely personal without making the landlord part of the project. This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI. This story was originally published September 8, 2026 at 9:27 AM with the headline "Two roommates turned a high school sticker collection into the coolest apartment wall decor you'll see." Related Stories from Tacoma News Tribune Living Are 3D wall panels actually renter-friendly? What to know before covering an entire accent wall September 8, 2026 9:13 AM Ryan Brennan Trend Hunter Email this person Ryan Brennan is a content specialist working with McClatchy Media's Trend Hunter and national content specialists team.