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- 7 tips for brightening a dark hallway
A beautiful, welcoming hallway is how we introduce our homes to friends and loved ones. The home’s centre point – the portal and ‘appetiser’ – sets the tone and flow for the rest of the space. But as a transitional area, it can be difficult to get right.
Coats are flung, shoes are kicked off, packages are left, and people are coming and going, so balancing all that function with style is an eternal hallway challenge. And because we’re always just ‘passing through’, decorating it can slide down our priority list. After all, there’s nothing like sitting in a room to notice all the changes you want to make to it!
The other hallway challenge? Light. Hallways are notoriously dark spaces. Many have few, small windows – or none at all – and often what light there is can get swallowed up by a long and narrow room dimension.
With so many elements at play, creating a light, airy hallway space takes some consideration. So what can you do to brighten a dark hallway, even when working with little natural light? Well, quite a lot, thankfully! Here are seven of our favourite dark hallway hacks.
1. Layer your lighting

Of course, where natural light is limited, there’s still scope to make clever use of other light sources. A good approach in any room, but particularly where light is limited, is to pay attention to the layers of lighting you use. Combining ambient lighting, task lighting, and accent lighting can help you find the balance between the functional light your hallway needs and the mood you’d like to set.
Spotlights or pendant lighting will likely be your source of ambient hallway lighting. If you have the space for a bit of a showstopper pendant light, the hallway is a perfect place to make a statement. We love some of the beautiful designs by Nordic Elements that seem to exude light, even when they’re not switched on!
Task lighting in a hallway can be simple but effective – maybe a lamp on a console table where you keep your post and write down messages. Kave always has a great selection to suit a range of aesthetics. And, finally, accent lighting might look like some well-placed sconces or other wall-mounted uplighting, to illuminate shadows and create a brighter space – the aim is to fill corners and nooks with soft, diffused light.
If you have artwork on your hallway walls, mounting displays or picture lights can accentuate them beautifully, showing them off and creating a bright, gallery-like feel. For an extra sense of warmth and atmosphere, a few well-placed candles are the perfect, welcoming final touch.
2. Choose flattering flooring

An unflattering floor choice can suck the light and colour out of a room faster than you’d think. In hallways with limited space and light, the right flooring can make all the difference.
If you’re thinking about a complete redecoration, you could strip everything back and start again with your choice of floorboards or laminate, tiles or stones, or carpet if that suits the space (though if you have lots of coming and going, it’s not the most practical choice).
It’s not just about the tone of the tiles or floorboards you choose, either. Choosing wider floorboards and larger tiles can maximise the light in the room, with fewer visible joints creating a more spacious, brighter feel. Thinner boards and smaller or patterned tiles can create a feeling of confinement and make a narrow space feel even smaller.
If you don’t have the time or budget for a whole new floor, there’s still plenty you can do with what you have. Dark floorboards can be stripped back and stained (depending on the wood) or painted a lighter, brighter colour. Painting floorboards can be intimidating but, when done well, can significantly impact your space and compliment your hallway’s colour scheme. Check out these ideas by Little Greene Paint & Paper for creative ways to breathe new life into old floorboards.
If you need a quicker and cheaper fix for your hallway floor, a bright and colourful runner or rug is the best way to make a quick difference. Benuta always has bright, beautiful neutral rugs.
3. A lick of light, bright paint

Colour works. And while a bright white or eggshell shade can look really beautiful in a hallway, you’re not beholden to whites and creams to create a sense of light. By all means, choose something vibrant and fresh, but be mindful of the finish. The glossier the finish, the better it will reflect and diffuse the light in the room.
Where you want to maximise light reflection while still having a pop of strong colour, you can combine vibrant tones with panels or sections of paler colour. The trick is to look closely at your hallway – its shapes, nooks, and panels – and consider where your light tones will work hardest and your colours will look best.
If you’d prefer white walls, this is always an elegant choice and could allow you to make a fun statement with your floors by injecting some colour into them, with the painted floorboards and/or bright rugs we’ve already talked about.
4. Mirrors, mirrors on the wall

When light is lacking, mirrors are magic. Even if your hallway is narrow or small and your instinct might be to minimise the decorative ‘clutter’, mirrors shouldn’t be considered part of that clutter. A large mirror placed on a wall opposite a light source will reflect and double the light from that source, and make the room feel far bigger than it is.
Reflective and high gloss surfaces will also bounce light around your hallway. You can find some beautiful mirrored console tables like this one from Luxury Interiors that won’t dominate a room, but almost blend in, and reflect your hallway’s light and colour to brighten up the dark space.
Feature walls (mirrors and/or framed photos and prints arranged in an interesting cluster) are also a fun way to add more reflective surfaces – and intrigue – to your hallway. You could collect old mirrors from vintage shops, charity shops, and auctions. You can easily find antique giltwood and rococo-style mirrors for a pinch, and they can be painted so that the frames match each other and work with your colour palette. Ski Country Antiques offers tips on decorating with antique mirrors.
5. Focus on the features

As always, the devil is in the details. The radiators, spindles, dado rails, stair risers, doors, and door frames can all be designed and utilised to help brighten your space. These are the features you might consider painting in those vibrant, bright tones we discussed earlier, or maybe these are the areas you want to paint in a clean, crisp white.
Using strong colours to accentuate mouldings and trims has another effect, too – it can draw the eye upwards towards high ceilings and create highlights that accentuate the structure and shape of your room.
Radiators can be covered with attractive and brightly painted wood, creating a new mantle – with a refractive, glossy top – on which a candle, some bright plants or flowers, or bright and reflective decor can sit.
6. Declutter your space

The endless battle between a hallway’s style and function is fought with storage and clutter. Picture multiple large dark winter coats hanging on a coat rack, hulking in a corner, and veritably vacuuming every ray of light from the room. In a dark hallway, clutter is the enemy.
If you have under-stair storage, you could add hooks where coats can hang, out of sight. If your hall becomes a shoe graveyard, why not find a bright and pretty shoe rack that can close up and hide its contents? Try to keep bags and backpacks out of the space, as tempting as it can be to dump all extra weight as soon as we walk through the door after a long day!
If everything in your hallway is there intentionally and clutter is minimised, it’ll automatically feel brighter and calmer, especially if it’s already a narrow space.
For guidance on decluttering, check out our article on how to declutter and reorganise your home.
7. Accentuate adjacent light

Sometimes a hallway simply has little light to work with. Rarely, however, are the hallway’s adjoining rooms also in the dark. If you really need some more light in your hallway, you can make some changes to let some of that adjacent light in.
Have a bright living room with a large window? Consider swapping out a fully wooden door for a full or half-glass-panelled one, allowing a whole new stream of light to flood your hall. If you have another adjoining room that gets light at a different time of day, you could do the same to ensure your hallway stays naturally bright all day long. Coupled with a few well-placed mirrors, this may be one of the most transformative changes you can make.
Final thoughts…
Whether you’re ready for a full redesign or a few simple, quick, and inexpensive tweaks, creating a brighter hallway is a worthwhile and impactful way to change how you feel about your home, right from the moment you walk through the front door.
While we hope some of our tips have given you some food for thought, the most important thing we can advise is to sit in your hallway and pay attention to where the light hits, where it doesn’t, and where you can implement little changes that make a big difference.
You know your space better than anyone, so once you’ve looked at every nook and cranny, why not put some of our suggestions into practice and transform your home’s most transitional space?
For further reading, check out our articles: 10 ways to bring more light into your home and 8 ways to use feng shui for a happier home.
Have you redesigned your hallway or is it something you’ve been thinking about doing? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
Dee Murray is a freelance journalist and copywriter, and a lifestyle writer for Rest Less. After graduating from DIT Dublin with a degree in Scriptwriting and the University of Sussex with an MA in Creative Writing, Dee began writing for experience and adventure companies. She then founded Ryanair’s first travel blog, which she managed and wrote for for five years. She writes about a range of topics but most often about travel and adventure or women’s interests. She also has a keen interest in behavioural psychology, mental health, and nutrition and wellness. When she’s not writing, you can find her in the woods with her dog Boudicca, playing piano (poorly), or tending to her plants and vegetables.
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