Hallway makeover
The first room you see when you walk into somebody's home, the hallway, is often the last one to be decorated if decorated at all. But the hallway says so much about you and your home. I love walking into an inviting scene something that maybe teases you to what the rest of the interior is going to look like. My hallway had boring bare walls for way to long as I had to wait for the floor to be finished but on Sunday that was finally done so I could start decorating my entry, have a look at how I injected a bit of colour and fun into the space.
As you can see my hallway was rather boring and almost more like a corridor then an entrance. Narrow and running all the way to the back of the house this room could use a bit of colour injection. One of the first things I did when we moved in was painting the front door, but picking a door colour was easier said then done. I really wanted a bright yellow door but Mister Handmade Home wanted something more in keeping with the house. Off to B&Q we went to pick up some Valspar exterior paint and for me to get some colour inspiration and boy do you get inspiration there! The Valspar colour wall is like a dream, every colour you ever could think of has a little card and if you want a colour they don't have they can scan and colour match your specific hue. I could have spend hours just looking at all the different shades but shopping with an inpatient boy I settled for the colour Forever Teal pretty quickly. This teal is a great colour pop but not too in your face and it goes great with the period of our home. Just two coats was enough to cover this previous dark red door into something more fun.
Have a look at the video to see all the other changes I have made in the hallway.
How do you like my 'racing' stripe? I wanted to paint the whole wall but thought that it might be a bit much in such a small and narrow space. I wanted something that would draw you eye to the side and not to the end of the hallway and initially wanted to add geometric shapes to the wall but then thought isn't it more fun to do something with the coat rack and picture ledge and tie it all together. One thing sprung to mind...a stripe! The blue stripe is painted in Valspar's Cerulean sky. I love this colour as it's almost a perfect sunny day sky blue, my favourite colour ever.
The picture ledge is the Mosslanda by Ikea (115cm) and is perfect if you like changing your art work regularly like I do. I'm not a big fan of keep drilling holes in the wall so a picture ledge is a perfect solution. It's great for displaying framed pictures, postcards, trinkets and small plants like this cute tiny succulent. We even put our mail on the ledge. Do you like how the blue stripe follows the top of the ledge?
I also updated my shoe cupboard, in the video you can see how it looked in our previous home. It was painted in a white gloss paint that got very chipped and had metal door pulls. To tie the cupboard into its new space I used the Forever teal and Cerulean sky paint on two of the doors and gave the sides and the top door a fresh coat of white. The handles got replaced with wooden ones for a more rustic look and I made a new top from an old floor board. The wooden top is simply cut to size and glued on, the pine really ties in with the pine doors in my hallway.
Of course the mirror got a lick of True Teal as well :) The shoe cupboard looks a bit more like a console table now it has the textured wooden top and is a great space to keep a bowl for our sunglasses and my lipsticks, a jar of doggy treats and some fresh flowers to liven up the space.
What do you think of my makeover? Are you tempted to add a bit more colour to your hallway? To make a better style flow in between rooms? I'm not completely done in the hallway yet as the stairs are in desperate need of an update, I'm definitely not planning on keeping does awful beige/purple carpets. I'm going to rip up the carpets, sand and paint the stairs and then add a new runner. Not sure if I will go for a seagrass runner one or a kilim look, more on that in a few weeks time!