A stylish entrance sets the tone for the rest of your home. With help and advice from our experts, here’s how to design a hallway that creates the right impression
Achieving a hallway you can be proud of and which does justice to the rest of your home relies on several important factors. For example, getting your hallway lighting just right is an excellent starting point and there are several tricks you can try to eliminate shadows and illuminate every inch of your space to make it appear larger and
more welcoming. It’s also about creating a space with ideas that are personal to you, and one that reflects your own tastes and sense of style.
To help you make the most of this area of your home we asked architects, interior designers and other experts for their ideas on what makes an ideal modern hallway…
USE EXTERIOR MATERIALS TO LINK INSIDE TO OUTSIDE
When architect Jake Edgley of Edgley Design created the hallway in one of his awardwinning self-builds, he used exterior timber cladding on an internal wall to bring the outside world into the doubleheight space. The primary wall was finished in the same western red cedar cladding as the outside, which helps to link interior and exterior. Jake also positioned a skylight above the design to add sunlight and continue the theme of bringing nature inside. A lightweight contemporary staircase provided a light, open feel to complement the look.
Your home doesn’t have to be cedar clad for this insideoutside theme to work. An exposed red brick wall can provide external texture to a hallway, too, as can painted render, or bare basalt, sandstone or granite bricks.
ADD PATTERN AND TEXTURE
Hallway wallpaper can add intrigue to a space and set it apart from other homes, especially if you have a spectacular custom design. And if you’re more reserved in your styling, wallpaper isn’t just about colour, either, it’s also about texture. “Adding a feature wall with wallpaper is a great way to add texture to any space,” confirms Gawaine Archibald, from Archibald’s Decorating & Renovations.
When the Eastbourne-based decorator worked on this home in Essex, he used contrasting wallpapers to decorate the high feature walls – one with a subtle floral design and the other with a flat colour that referenced one of the shades in the patterned paper. To complement this look, the woodwork was painted in a brilliant white.
MAKE THE MOST OF MIRRORS
A large mirror can be a stunning focal point but it can also add depth to a modern hallway — it it’s well positioned it can have a similar impact to a piece of artwork. Placed on a wall beside or opposite a window, a mirror will bounce the daylight around to make the space appear larger and more welcoming. A neu
