Her Sister Painted Her Favorite Flowers on Her Hallway Walls — Now It’s a Colorful Escape
Blank white spaces, given their expansiveness and endless potential, can be tricky to decorate — especially if it’s a long hallway. But luckily for plant enthusiast Paige Tailyn, she knew she wanted to create an experience for her hallway that would make guests “feel suddenly engulfed by their surroundings,” she says.
Through her platform, Blossom Effect, Paige advocates for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ mental wellness and uses her love and knowledge of plants and flowers to help others find inner strength and growth. So it was clear that a floral and plant-filled mural would fill the hallway.
Her Artist Sister Helped with the Hallway Transformation
Plus, it was a no-brainer for Paige to ask her artist sister, Najai, to help with the project. “My sister and I developed a plan to curate a space that made people feel like they were on a journey to the next space, and then executed it,” Paige shares.
She Wanted to Fill the Blank Space and Create an Experience for Guests
For Paige, the goal “was to utilize ‘dead’ space and make it feel alive,” while Najai’s goal was focused on her painting technique. Several of the plants included in the final design are Paige’s favorites — a lady slipper orchid, a moth orchid, and a pitcher plant — so it was especially important that Najai’s “blending was on point.”
“Traditionally, I work with oil paint, so playing with acrylic paints is definitely a learning curve,” explains Najai. “Because acrylic paint dries quite fast, I wanted to make sure color gradients were as seamless as possible.”
They Created Digital Mockups to Lay Out Where Each Plant Would Go in the Mural
But before Najai even started painting, she and Paige began the design process and created digital mockups for each side of the hallway. They used images that featured optical illusions because the sisters both wanted to create a surreal scene for the hallway experience.
Najai also quickly realized that the hallway was too narrow to fit her projector, and she had to freehand the entire mural with pencil first. It “was less of a setback and more of a redirection,” she notes.
A Custom Paint Palette and Spray Paint Created the Finished Look
But even with the project’s “redirection,” Najai created a “funky and surreal” mural using freehand techniques and a custom color palette from primary acrylic paint colors. She also used spray paint as the final touch in some areas of the mural to add highlights and spots to the orchids’ lips.
“My favorite part is the Lady Slipper orchid,” Najai shares. “I loved the fun arrangement of colors on that side of the wall. That part used the most spray paint, which made it fun to work on.”
But for Paige, her favorite part is how “striking and eye-catching” the colorful hallway is now. “The new space feels like a conversation piece,” she adds.
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