Opinions on decorating a long hallway

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a long, 40" wide hallway in my new place that leads from the kitchen, down about 20’, then a 90 degree turn of about 3’, then another 90 degree turn back into the family room (basically creating what feels like a dead end).

On one side are doorways into rooms (bathroom, bedroom, closet, etc) that don’t allow much natural light in (west side of building and naturally shaded).

About 5’ from the kitchen, the ceiling goes from standard height to 9’+. The floors are all hardwood and the walls are an off-white, and non too plumb (very old, but very well maintained building).

So basically, a long, darkish, dead end feeling hall.

I stuck a large mirror at the end. This kinda works.

On the doorway side, I added artwork here and there, finding it easy to place stuff between door frames without it seeming cluttered.

My problem is the long, left wall.

Hanging pictures seems impossible, as the out-of-plumb walls seem to magnify if the pictures aren’t level (and intentionally hanging them at different levels hasn’t looked right either).

A really long panoramic photo would seem to work, I guess, but I don’t really want to spend the money, and the darkness would be a waste (the hall has two ceiling lights, though I prefer to keep them off if possible).

Any opinions?

2

Could you paint it with a pattern, or put up wallpaper? Something busy might fool the eye away from the non-plumb-ness.

Maybe there is some way to hang fabric on it … pseudo drapes? Wall hanging?

3

Do you have kids? If so this could be a good place for a kid art gallery since their stuff will probably be all different sizes and shapes anyway.

Otherwise maybe try hanging stuff that isn’t square flat frames, tapestry? Sculpture?

4

you need more natural light.
one option is expensive–a skylight (a window in the roof)
but it’s much easier to install a light tunnel

5

Something I’ve seen done a lot lately is . . well, it’s a bit hard to describe, but I’ll give it a shot.

So, you paint the wall one color in not a matte finish, but not a gloss finish. Then, over that, you can either do stripes or damask or something. . . but instead of doing a whole different color, you instead do the “art” in a different texture. So, you can either do a high gloss in the same color for the pattern. Or maybe a suede. Something that adds dimension and finish without being totally garish.

6

If I had a long hallway to paint…

I would paint some cool anamorphic art, like this:

A “New” Concept in Interior Design

or one of these:

Georges Rousse’s Illusory Illusions
Perspective Subway Art

7

We have a similarly long, narrow hallway. We haven’t done anything with it, except leave it plain and white. We briefly joked around about trying to do an “acid trip tunnel” treatment to it, like the one in the Detroit Airport. Then we got bored and started painting other rooms.

8

I have one of those now, I didn’t do much with it because I figured people wouldn’t be hanging out in the narrow hallway very much.

I also had a hall like that in an old apartment. Apparently I had more energy then, because I got a bunch of small, inexpensive frames – the most simple kind, in slightly different sizes and shapes – and filled them with photos. I hung them in an asymmetrical cluster, centered in the hallway. Spacing them all along the hallway emphasized the non-plumbness too much. Periodically, I would switch out the photos.

9

That’s what I started to do and may go back to it, but with various sizes/shapes like you suggest. Thanks to the SDMB, I now know that decent frames can be found at Dollar Stores. I can also get any number of sizes for my prints at pretty good prices via SmugMug, so maybe I should try it. Maybe I’ll add some of my more unusual charcoal drawings too.

As to painting the walls, I’d rather not. I hope to never, ever paint a wall again for as long as I live.

10

Get hold of some cheap or used window frames. Hang them on the wall, then paint some very realistic windows on the wall, with different scenes. And if you need a little more light, string some Christmas lights inconspicuously within the frames . . . or run the lights along where the wall meets the ceiling.

11

I did something similar in my hallway; the base color is a flat paint and I sponged on a complimentary shade in a gloss paint. It can distract from a multitude of sins.

Hey, I like that idea.

12

Go for bowling alley decor.

13

You could also turn it into a “laugh in the dark” . . . put a lot of strange multimedia things jumping out here and there, to make it a scary, fun experience.

14

I have something similar in my house (sorry, don’t have pics, can’t take any… I’m not actually living there right now): what I have is a variety of items hanging from the walls.

There’s a group of 9 small Moroccan mirrors I got as a present, arranged to form a hexagon sitting on one of its sides and a square stading on its point; there’s a frame with five pictures from NY (the frame is horizontal, but the pics are mostly vertical: the Flatiron building, ESB, Chrysler building, Ms Liberty and I don’t remember what the other one is); there’s a yard-long wooden salamander I got in Costa Rica (vertical); there’s an arrangement of four frames, each containing three Japanese woodcuts (the frames are horizontal, the pictures themselves contain a lot of vertical elements, the frames are arranged in a sort of double staircase shape); there’s a group of three local pictures, framed, with the frames arranged in a V… most of it isn’t the kind of stuff people will actually stare at unless they happen to be into the specific subject.

15

Neon beer signs. A touch of classiness, and they’ll solve your lighting problems. :slight_smile: