Your hallway is the first thing that guests see as they enter your home. If you’re keen to give a good impression from the off, by providing a warm and welcoming atmosphere and giving people a taste of your interior decor style, it’s important to get it right.
However, your hallway can all too quickly become cluttered and messy, setting the tone for a chaotic domestic experience within, rather than one defined by soothing serenity. To help you keep organised and make a good first impression on your guests, here is how to create an attractive and welcoming hallway in your home.
Declutter
As both the entrance and exit point to your home, your hallway is a prime candidate for household clutter. Coats and shoes discarded in a hurry, wet umbrellas drying from the rain, and piles of junk mail all make for an untidy hallway, not to mention debris blown in whenever you open the door causing aesthetic chaos.
Take an afternoon to thoroughly declutter your hallway. Recycle junk mail and sweep away any dirt. Go through your outside shoes and clothing and donate any that you no longer wear to your local charity shop. You could even invest in an attractive shelving unit to store your coats and shoes neatly.
Flooring
Your hallway is arguably the area of your home experiencing the highest footfall. As such the flooring should be durable enough to withstand this amount of traffic without becoming scruffy and worn over time.
Tiles make a great hallway flooring option as they are hard-wearing and durable, and can easily be kept looking their best with regular mopping. If you live in a period home, you might even be lucky enough to have the original Victorian tiling hidden under a carpet.
Rugs
If you’re keen to pull up that carpet and reveal what’s lurking underneath – for better or for worse – then a neat compromise between hard flooring, whether wood or tiles, and the warmth and comfort that a carpet brings is a hallway runner rug, which adds sophistication, both in an aesthetic and a tactile fashion.
Walls
Cheerfully decorated walls can help to make your hallway bright and welcoming; however, with people coming into and out of your home, your hallway walls can soon become grubby and stained. Go for a fresh coat of paint in a bright and airy colour, such as a light green or off-white, for a clean and welcoming look. Or, cover your hallway walls in an eye-catching statement wallpaper to really grab the attention of any guests.
This is particularly effective if your hallway leads into a large, open-plan living space, as that statement wallpaper creates something of a tight and guided journey before the release of entering a room blessed with natural light and that all-important sense of expansiveness. If that room boasts an oversized rug, then all the better.
The placement of your oversized rug matters, too; if you opted for a runner in your hallway, you may want an unadorned living room floor, to avoid visual overload.
Lighting
Your hallway can be a dark and dingy place without adequate lighting. Not only can this be unwelcoming for guests, but you may find it intimidating to return home late at night and be faced with a dark hallway. Choose a ceiling light, such as a pendant light, with an expansive light range to light up even the darkest corner.
You could also supplement this with a freestanding standard lamp to provide a softer source of light throughout dark evenings and dim mornings. You could even install a smart lightbulb system that you can control via an app to ensure your hallway is also shown in its best light.
On the subject of adding flourishes of tech to your home, check out these 5 modern and smart upgrades to improve your home. Alexa, take me to a different article!
