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My lease says no holes in the walls beyond what is needed for a single picture hook per room, and even that comes with a warning that the patch has to be invisible or the deposit takes a hit. So for the last two years I have been hanging mirrors, shelves, and a fairly heavy woven wall hanging using nothing but adhesive strips and a lot of trial and error.
The first failure was about weight, not adhesive quality
I hung a mirror that I later weighed at just under nine pounds using a set of adhesive strips rated for five pounds, because the packaging said five pounds per strip and I used two strips and did the math wrong in my head at the store. It held for about eleven days and then came down at two in the morning, thankfully onto a rug and not the floor tile.
After that I started actually weighing things before hanging them, using a bathroom scale held under the item, which feels a little silly but works. Now I round up to the next weight bracket rather than down, and I use one more strip than the packaging suggests for anything that hangs near a doorway or gets bumped often.
The second failure was about wall texture
My bedroom wall has a light orange peel texture, and the first time I tried adhesive hooks there, two of the three failed to hold within a week. It turned out the strips need a smooth, flat contact surface to bond properly, and the tiny bumps in that texture were breaking the seal in spots I could not see.
The fix that worked was sanding nothing, since I am not allowed to alter the wall surface, but instead pressing each strip on and holding firm pressure for a full thirty seconds per strip, then leaving the item off the wall for an hour before hanging anything on the hook. The adhesive needs that time to actually cure against the texture, and I had been hanging things within a couple of minutes of applying the strip, which did not give it a chance.
What has worked consistently since then
For anything under about three pounds, like a small framed print or a light clock, a single medium strip works fine as long as I give it the curing time. For anything in the five to ten pound range, like the mirror once I got it right, I use a strip rated above the actual weight and add a second strip as backup, positioned so it shares the load rather than just sitting there unused.
For the woven wall hanging, which is wider than it is heavy, I did not hang it from the top corners the way you might with a canvas. Instead I used a slim removable rod pushed through the top loop of the hanging and rested the rod on two adhesive hook brackets, one at each end. That spreads the weight across two points instead of concentrating it in the fabric at the corners, and it has held for over a year now.
The strip is only half the equation. Wall texture and curing time decide whether it actually holds, and I ignored both the first two times.
Removal without marking the paint
The stretch and peel removal method that most adhesive strip brands describe does work, but only if you pull slowly, straight down along the wall, not out and away from it. Pulling outward is what tends to take a bit of paint with it. I also warm the strip slightly with a hair dryer on low before pulling if it has been up for many months, since the adhesive gets more stubborn over time and warming loosens it a little.
Where I still have not found a good answer
I have a narrow floating shelf I would like to add above my desk, and every adhesive option rated for the combined weight of the shelf and anything I would put on it feels like more strips than I am comfortable trusting to drywall that is not mine. For now that shelf idea is on hold, and I am using a small cart on wheels instead. Not every rental wall problem has a no hole solution, and I think it is fine to just say so rather than force something onto adhesive that was not built for it.
If you are starting from zero
Weigh the item first, actually weigh it, round up on the strip rating, test your wall texture with a cheap strip before committing an expensive one, and give every strip real curing time before you trust it. It took me two falls, one at two in the morning, to learn all four of those things, so you can skip straight to having them.
