Designing And Planning A Hallway

Don't neglect your hall. The entrance to your home deserves as much care as the rest of your rooms when it comes to decorating and furnishing it. Here's how to do it - and take care of your budget, too.

By Sarah Warwick

First Impressions Count

You may think there are few things you can do to such a small space, but the priorities that will make an immediate difference are storage, layout and colour.

Improve The Layout

You can't often change the layout of a hall without major expense so the most critical factor affecting layout are the items you need to store in it. Hallways are busy places. In the mornings there could be four or five people rushing around putting on coats and shoes and looking for bags so any storage you do have can get in the way of this movement.

But it's a simple problem to solve if you follow these rules:

* First, assess all the space available including up the walls, above and around doors and under the stairs. Are there any storage opportunities you've overlooked? Often there are dead spaces that have potential for storage or display. Is the cupboard under the stairs being used to its full potential, or could it benefit from being fitted out properly to take anything from the vacuum cleaner to shoes? Or, could you remove it completely to help the hallway feel more spacious?

* Stairways must be unimpeded, for safety, but landings (and particularly the walls there) can often house less used items, such as books (on shelves) or homework bags (on hooks). Just don't expect kids to put their things all the way up here. It won't happen without a lot of nagging.

* Think about unsightly meters and fuse boxes, could they be disguised or even moved outside to create more space indoors?