Hall Makeover & Moodboards
We recently decided to give our hallway a make over! It was desperately in need with us having an old farmhouse and a leaking chimney! So we started with the chimney repairs and then were ready to begin on the inside.
It all began when I read a blog about Farrow & Ball ‘s ‘green smoke’ colour and fell in love as soon as I saw it! So I wanted to try and create a calm, serene yet welcoming hall way with some wooden panelling going up the staircase using this lovely deep green and some ‘james white’ to compliment it. I wanted it to be in keeping with the age of our house but just put a modern twist to it. We get asked to do this a lot with our farmhouse dining sets, to keep the farmhouse character but give them a modern country vibe. This is where the choice of colours and finishes we can use really helps. We don’t just use one brand of paints but lots of different quality brands from Farrow & Ball to Little Greene, Frenchic and Fusion mineral paint to name but a few, so we have a huge spectrum of tones to select from. This can make picking a little more tricky as there is so much choice.
I don’t know about you, but its often which ‘white’ to select that causes me the most difficulty as there are just so many!
So to begin with I started with creating a mood board on Pinterest. I find it is a really useful tool to soak up any inspiration and then narrow down your design scheme and help pull it all together as a seamless look. I tend to look at lighting options, curtains/fabrics and then the colour scheme. I also love ‘Escape to the Chateau’ and was really keen to include the ‘potagerie’ fabric, which Angel designed somewhere in my design scheme, so was over the moon when I managed to get some curtains in this fabric!
I also have a bit of a thing for plants and love the trailing artificial ones, mainly because you don’t need green fingers to keep these going! Low maintenance is a win-win for me!
So I hunted down a few accessories and then was ready to start…
We live in an old farmhouse so before we could start painting, we had to remove all the old woodchip wallpaper and then have the walls re-plastered. I love old period houses but they do come with their own problems and histories! This house is no exception!
Anyway once all the plaster had dried, we painted the walls initially and then popped to buy the wood ready to begin making the sections and paint all the beading for the panelling. This did take a while and we opted for an eggshell for extra durability.
Luckily my husband is pretty good with angles and could work out a design for the panels going up the staircase relatively easily. I had the easy bit of painting it all!
We also made some lovely rustic shelves from reclaimed scaffold boards which I stained to match my oak staircase.
I will attach some photos of my mood board and the finished hall way.
We still have some tweaking to do and more accessories and perhaps a gallery picture wall up the stairs, but it looks a whole lot better than before we began and we have really enjoyed the transformation.
Mood board created for my design scheme:
Photos of the finished Hall way design:
