Walk This Way: Transforming our Hallway into a Hotel-Inspired Period-Style Space!

It’s no secret that when we were thinking about buying our first home, we had a period property in mind. We’ve nothing against a new build home (clearly) but we wanted to ensure our space had character – and that’s quite a mean feat to achieve when you move into what’s basically a white box. But all isn’t lost if, like us, you find yourself in the same situation. Turns out, all it takes is some paint, a few sheets of MDF and some imagination. If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain and all that…

Our starting point for the hallway was pretty standard – we had a plain white room that we’d temporarily popped some vinyls and prints in to cover the bare walls. During our first year in the flat, we’d tried a floor lamp, a full length mirror and a corner table in there that we were never 100% sold on. However, trying these bits and bobs out in the space definitely gave us some inspiration for what we wanted.

When it came to the colour choice for the hall, boy did we go on a journey. As it’s the hallway in the centre of the flat, we knew we wanted to go dark. It might seem counter intuitive because we’d want to retain as much light as possible – but the advice we got was quite on the contrary. Because the space can be so dark, it’s the perfect excuse to go as dark as possible. We also bought one of the highly-coveted Viper ceramic table lamps from the Luke Edward Hall x Habitat collection and wanted this in the space, so something that complimented its bold green shade was a necessity. As we were absolutely stuck, we did what came natural to us – panic and take the decision to Instagram. We were torn between a mustard yellow and a dark forrest green, but these really weren’t doing it for us. You can read about our previous hallway makeover plans here!

So enter Lick… and their lovely colour consultation process. You might remember we gave Lick a tour of our flat in the summer just after we’d painted the spare room and we spoke to the team at the time about our hallway. So we had a call booked in with the wonderful Sam, who joined us on FaceTime to get a feel for what we wanted and what we’d like. The process was pretty thorough – but also fun – as we talked about everything from personal style to our favourite pieces in the home. Sam then went and worked her magic and came back with the below render of what our hallway could look like – pretty nifty, right?

Sam went above and beyond to take our vision into consideration, even down to featuring some creepy portraits we got at the Hackney Flea Market a couple of years ago and have lived in our sideboard ever since – mostly because we didn’t know where to place them. The other aspect that Sam had absolutely smashed was the fact we wanted paneling. We spotted lots of our fellow bloggers doing this – particularly Melanie Lissack – and we loved the idea of bringing this into our space to give it more character.

After some deliberation and some long chats, we decided to investigate further. We took Sam’s recommendation and got samples of the Green 06 and White 02 for the space. We loved the dark and moody hues of the green and were immediately sold – it was exactly what we were looking for. Because we were looking to keep the roof white, Sam’s suggestion for the white walls also worked really well. Our walls had some scuffs and scratches – not to mention cracks where our building was settling. Giving these a once over was definitely on our agenda!

So, that was it – mind made up. We booked some annual leave in and got the measuring tape out. As we were doing the panels ourselves, we knew we had to get it right. We discovered a company creatively named Wood Sheets that could cut MDF sheets to size for us. As we were going to paint these, having a polished and finished product wasn’t too important. So we made sure we had the sizing right on the wall for four longer panels and a handful of shorter ones in order to create the look and feel we desired. All we had to do with the supplier was add the sizes we needed – including the thickness, which we made sure we had measured against our skirting board. Et voila – they would be with us in 14 working days and the order only came to about £35, so it was an absolute steal to create this look ourselves.

Lick very kindly gifted us the paint (thank you!) and once that got delivered we got started! The overall change in the room was evident even from the first coat and we were super excited about the change it was making to the space. We hit a few snags: our panelling arrived late and there were many paint splotches on the floor, ceiling and sockets but nothing we couldn’t tackle.

We won’t lie, the panelling was dicey. We placed the panels on the wall with some beads of sweat on our forehead – if we’d got the measurements wrong we’d have to wait all over again to get resized sheets. But luckily, they fit like a glove and we’d discovered caulk, which is ideal for filling any gaps. We used a liberal amount of No-More-Nails on each sheet to attach these to the walls and then left this to dry for about 24hours before priming and painting.

Once the paint dried and we did the inevitable touch-ups, we got the corner table painted in the same colour as the wall and back in place. Other finishing touches we put in place were a stunning porthole mirror from Rockett St George and the portraits we mentioned earlier which are from Oil Archive. We wanted a statement piece of art too, so we were kindly gifted the Yellow Mark Painted Canvas from the amazing folk at Mineheart, which was the final finishing touch we needed.

And that was it – we stood on a pretty gloomy Sunday morning and rejoiced as our hallway was done! It’s transformed the hallway from a dull, white box to a sleek, boutique hotel-feeling entrance. The panelling is giving it that much needed period flair that we were looking for, taking it from feeling like not just another new build property, but to something with a bit of personality. We adore the finished look and we’re really chuffed we undertook the paneling and painting ourselves, it was an amazing sense of achievement and we definitely gave ourselves a little pat on the back (and a well-earned glass of wine) once it was done. Sure, there are some things that we’d love to nip and tuck in the space – such as those white light switches and plug sockets – but we’re super content at the moment with the look and feel and we can come to those final bits and bobs at a later date. If anyone’s got any guidance about masking an entry phone in a new build flat, we’re totally all ears!

We need to give a massive shout out to Lick for this project for working with us on it. From the colour consultation with the lovely Sam, to being kindly supplied with their gorgeous paint, we’re over the moon that we could work together to transform our room. If you’re also struggling to pick a colour, we’d 100% recommend their consultation service which really helped us out.

We’re already eyeing up the nook in our lounge for our next project, but until then, we’re off to stalk the halls…