Vertical images, break up long hall

DEAR GAIL: We have a long, boring hallway that goes from our family room to the bedrooms. It is a typical hallway, only about 36 inches wide, so we don’t want to use any furniture. Right now we have family pictures down both sides. We’re ready for a change and we want to dress it up. Any suggestions? — Patricia.

DEAR PATRICIA: Hallways are normally the last areas that get decorated in a home since we treat them just as passage ways. Even though that is their main function, it’s important to treat them as any other part of your home when decorating.

Hallways are great areas for family pictures since they allow you to get close enough to actually see them. But there are a couple of different things you can do to change the look and even incorporate some of the pictures that you have.

One idea is to change the overall visual appearance from long and boring to tall and interesting. To break up how long the hallway is you’ll want to incorporate vertical elements. A simple idea is to run a chair rail on the wall and paint a darker accent color below it. Then treat the area above the chair rail with vertical-stripe wallpaper or paint tone-on-tone vertical stripes.

If you wanted to add more details, you can further enhance this treatment by adding wainscoting to the wall in the lower painted area. Wainscoting will add a lot of wonderful dimension to the wall and break up the long horizontal space that you have.

The simplest and quickest way is to paint the molding the same color as the wall. That way there’s no cutting in with paint and it still will make a dramatic difference. Another idea is to paint the molding the color of your baseboards and door casings, which is my preference so that the details stand out more. Then, you also can paint an accent color, add wallpaper or apply a faux paint treatment inside the framed areas.

If all that molding is not to your taste, take the same idea and add painted or stained bead board paneling below the chair rail. The bead board will bring in some of that vertical element that you need.

If you want something more dramatic with a strong vertical element, I would suggest using half columns on the walls. You can purchase faux columns that are made out of molded foam or plastic and attach them directly to the wall. Depending upon how long your hallway is, I would divide the wall into quarters and place the columns one quarter of the way down the hallway from each end, so that in between the columns you had about one-half of the wall space to decorate. So, if your hallway is 10 feet long, place the columns 21/2 feet from each end. Then in between the columns you’d have approximately 5 feet, where you’ll hang your artwork. I wouldn’t place any artwork on the walls from the columns to the end of the walls; that would make it too busy.

If you feel that you don’t have enough room for the half columns, have them painted on by a muralist. A muralist also could bring additional dimension to your hallway with a wonderful faux niche or arches, or painting the furniture that you don’t have room for on the walls. And check out the Internet for fabulous wall murals that you can just peel and stick on.

If you’d like to keep some family pictures on one side, give the grouping more interest by place molding on the wall about the size of an oversized frame, maybe 6 feet long by 4 feet high. Paint the molding the same color as your baseboard and paint an accent color inside. Now place your family pictures inside the framed area so that what you have is your smaller frames inside one larger frame. This gives your grouping more weight and interest, and will break up your wall.

One final idea is to purchase oversized vertical images or canvases and hang them down one side. You’d want the pieces to be the same size for the best effect. Don’t be afraid to go very tall for a real striking look. Again, what you are looking to do is break up the length of the hallway by giving it more height.

I hope these ideas got your creative juices flowing.

Gail Mayhugh, owner of GMJ Interiors, is a professional interior designer and author of a book on the subject. Questions may be sent by e-mail to: gail@gmjinteriors.com. Or, mail to: 7380 S. Eastern Ave., No. 124-272, Las Vegas, NV 89123. Her Web address is: www.GMJinteriors.com.