Are you in FL? Orange peel texture on the walls is very popular with apartment complexes, but private residences (single family homes) are often flat walls with no texture.

I actually clicked because I completely feel you. It's not nothing. You're spending how much time in there and textured walls and ceilings and weird light fixtures really do have a bizarre energy I don't like either. "Funky fabric," isn't going to do it, that's a totally different vibe. I like where your head's at. It's actually pretty labor intensive to sand down walls/ceiling, but def worth checking into and seeing if the owner would be down. What is even the point of popcorn ceilings? Just laziness? Textured walls? Because painting a board flat is hard? I don't understand. I do think maybe stretch like raw hide and wooden boards with maybe barn door slats on them could cover them up? Hmmmmmmm....

I am not sure if you realize it but the texture on apartments is used to hide a fast and reckless drywall job on a business property. Someone in this thread noted that private homes tend to have flat walls. The private home buyer expects a high quality drywall job without texture. The business owner buying/building an apartment complex doesn't give a fuck if the wall is textured as long as it looks ok. You will have a hard time finding an apartment without texture for this reason. I bought a home in Colorado and the ceilings were popcorn texture. I took a putty knife and scraped it all off, only to notice that all the irregularities not stood out where they were not visible under the popcorn texture. I would highly recommend that you just let it go until you buy your own home which will probably have flat walls anyway. Do what you feel. Make yourself happy if you can.