Betsy’s New House: Hallway Decorating Ideas

It’s move in day y’all. As I type, the old house is full of boxes, being carried out one by one.

I’m so excited that tonight will be our first official night in our new home. My mind is reeling with all of the new features that I’ll get to actually live with.

Throughout the renovation, I took an abnormal preoccupation with the hallway. Here is what was going on in my  brain from my favorite vantage point.

I went all E Hendo on y’all and made a gif… really I made this to illustrate to the dude what I was having a hard time articulating without a visual.
Now bear with me for a minute while I belabor myself with over-explanation.

Our house was full of doors. There were two in the hallway where there should be none. Once we started getting into moving things around, I was pinning long light filled halls with beautiful runners and quiet design moments and I wanted that in our hallway. I started to think about perspective and how soothing it is to visualize those two lines running to meet each other at a point on the horizon.

So the threshold into the back part of the house became a pre-occupation. I felt it was cutting off an opportunity for a beautiful line of site, a lovely perspective leading to a statement door frame to the Master, or a quiet chair in that far away corner. I was envisioning a thing of simple serene beauty and all of these extra door jamb angles were getting in my way.

This is what it looked like on our initial house tour, with the old homeowner’s stuff.

The contractor was happy to move the door jamb in the middle of the hall, but he was not so keen on busting out the door frame at the threshold. You would need to come over to the house and get the real feeling of the space to feel me out on this one, but his argument was that we needed the door trim to maintain the consistency throughout the home. I am not really so much into consistency.

My thought was that we are trying to modernize the home and clean lines would help with that.

Opening up the hallway with a flat drywall corner seemed like a sound design decision to me. But, he held out on his stubborn design opinion by deciding that while he would do it for me, he would charge me an arm and a leg for the job. So we decided fine, we will wait and we will live with it, and if I’m still obsessing over the hallway perspective when it comes time to redo the stairwell, then we can address it then.

It’s always interesting when you have a conviction that people want to challenge you on. Am I POSITIVE that the home would look better with the gaping opening. Nope.

But I still haven’t stopped thinking about it either.

Either way, it is miles better with the two doors and the one door jamb removed. Here is the new blank slate.

Those holes in the floor will be filled in soon.

Will I run a long runner up the hallway? Will we adorn the walls with radical art? Will there be repeating pendants to guide us down the hall?

Here are the inspiration images that I started pinning for a hallway decorating ideas. I’d love to hear your ideas or see your hallway spaces.

Art + Persian runner does a lot for this hall.
via Domaine

The wall flood lighting adds drama to a window less hallway, and I love the chair at the end.
From Carla Aston

We could keep playing perspective games and go with a linear picture ledge.
From Apartment Therapy

Chair rail is an option, but I think we’re steering away from traditional moulding. At any rate, I like all this for fantasy fodder for a different style of home.