Ask Apartment Apothecary – what colour should I paint my hallway?

Thank you to those of you who sent in questions or dilemmas this week – I promise I will try to get to them all. I had a couple of questions about storage in children’s rooms, a few about ways to keep the house tidy and clutter-free and five Facebook posts or emails about how to hide cables (yes, I said the dreaded word!). I will be tackling the cable issue in a couple of weeks – I need to gee myself up for that one 😉 Now, to this week…

AAA – What colour should I paint my hallway?

I want to go over this problem that Leila sent in a while back because another reader emailed me this week asking about the same thing. Ordinarily, you may not think picking a paint colour for the hallway is a problem but there are two things which set hallways apart from other rooms in the house: 1) Hallways can lack light as often they do not have their own windows 2) Hallways are generally very high traffic areas that get dirtier and more scuffed than other areas of the home due to outdoor shoes, boots, umbrellas, bags etc.

Coincidentally, Leila and Amanda, who both asked the question, have children and dogs. Amanda is desperate to have a bright, white hallway but knows that this is not practical as she has four children with mucky hands, school bags, wellies and a big, muddy dog. Leila, also told me that her hallway is quite dark and lacks light.

The solution? Paint the bottom half of the wall a darker colour and the top half white. This way, the darker colour of the bottom half of the wall, which is always more likely to get scuffed and scraped, can disguise the dirt. The top half of the wall stays light and bright, so not too much of the natural light is absorbed. Also, I just love the look of this design idea.

You could even use chalkboard paint for the bottom half of the wall, if you wanted to make it really child-friendly.

Check back next week for help with shoe storage. If you have an interiors dilemma, post it on my Facebook page or drop me an email at katy@18.200.196.112.

Katy x