Before & After: A Hallway Gets a Chic Update From Top to Bottom

published Mar 29, 2016
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Kevin’s hallway update is an excellent blend of style and function and a testament to really thinking about how the furniture is serving the space when making design choices. Also, I’m a total sucker for an interesting ceiling and this one is tops.

From Kevin: When it comes to small spaces that are hard to design, the hallway is one of the worst offenders. The narrow width and plethora of doorways make it almost impossible to find a place for any furniture, but creating a landing pad in the hallway is helpful for dropping everyday accoutrement like keys and change. As you can see in the ‘Before’ picture, a metal stool provided a small landing pad, but the space was essentially a long white box with no personality and the width was only accentuated by a long mirror at the end. While the long mirror was great for a last-minute outfit check, keeping these in the boudoir and bringing more intentional design to the hallway now makes it a chic one-stop destination before heading into the bedroom.

With a two-tone lattice bringing an element of depth to the ceiling, the hallway was transformed from boring box to a room with visual interest. It was also pretty easy to convert our horrible gold metal light fixtures from cheap to boho chic with a coat of matte black spray paint and the crafty genius of my mother. With the mirrored sconces flanking a smaller wall mirror, the eye is drawn up and across rather than just up and down, and the slim console fit perfectly at the end of the hall to add a modern touch that balances the proliferation of gold and mirrored surfaces above. The last touch was a subtle shade of grey (the exact shade of the lighter stripes) to the door frames.

You can see more on Kevin’s blog Thou Swell.

Thank you, Kevin!