The hallway is the first room in the house and the one that gets the least thought. It is usually treated as circulation, painted the same colour as everything else, given a console table and a mirror, and forgotten.
It is also the room that sets the tone for every other room, and the one place where a decorating decision is seen most often by the most people.
It can take more colour than you think
Nobody sits in a hall. It is a space passed through in seconds, which means it can carry a depth of colour that would be exhausting in a living room.
A dark hall also makes the rooms off it feel brighter, because the eye adjusts on the way through. Halls painted pale in the hope of making them feel larger usually just feel like corridors.
The floor is the main event
If there are original encaustic or geometric tiles under the carpet, they are almost certainly worth uncovering. They were laid because the hall takes more wear and more water than anywhere else, and they are still the best answer to that problem.
Where the tiles are gone, the useful principle is to make the floor the most robust surface in the house and the most patterned. Pattern hides grit, and grit is what halls are full of.
Furniture that earns its depth
The console table is the default choice and often the wrong one, because a shallow surface at waist height collects everything and holds nothing.
- A hall chair, which is shallow, hard and deliberately uncomfortable, because it is for putting shoes on rather than sitting in.
- A narrow chest with drawers, which absorbs the things that otherwise stay on the surface.
- A bench with storage beneath, if the hall is wide enough to lose forty centimetres.
- Hooks at two heights, one for adults and one low enough for children to actually use.
Light it like a room
A single overhead fitting in a hall produces the least flattering light in the house, and it is the first thing anyone arriving sees.
A wall light at head height, or a small lamp on the chest, changes the character of an entrance completely. It also means the hall has an evening state, which most do not.
Part of the Complete Guide Buying Vintage Furniture: A Complete Guide Read the full guide →
