Help me with my hallway

[smeisnotapirate]

Our 2nd floor has a ridiculously long blank hallway. It goes up the stairs on both sides, has 3 bedroom doors clustered at the top of the stairs, and then extends FOREVER around to the bathroom (seriously.... 15 feet later or so it turns and after another 8-10 feet the bathroom is there) around a corner. We have completely blank walls.

There are no windows in the hall, just blankness and doors (3 on one end at the top of the stairs, 2 on the other end). We painted it a cheerful sunny orange and I hung some pictures in white frames, but there is just SO.MUCH.WALL. Even the pictures are lost in all that hallway.

What do I do with it? We're installing some really nice overhead track lighting that can be focused on the walls to give some great indirect light, but otherwise we're stumped.

Decor geniuses, help us!

[dbsam]

I don't know how wide your hall is, but if it is wide enough...how about a few very large unframed paintings (like 5' x 5') instead of a bunch of smaller framed pictures?

or what about making your doors more interesting? We put a glass French door in a hall. (We originally did it to make the room less 'bedroom-y'. But it brings light into the hall and looks more interesting than a big white door.) You wouldn't want to change your master or bathroom door but for a young child's room it would be fine.

[zoebird]

chalk board paint and fun had by all?

[SoulCakes]

I'm kind of guessing at the layout. So your staircase is enclosed, meaning there are walls on either side of the stairs (no railing that opens to below)?

My first suggestion would be to add plants - big, tall ones that don't need too much light. Put one at the top of the stairs next to the bedroom doors and then put another at the corner of the hallway where it turns to go to the bathroom.

Then, pictures. You want to do something big - either a cluster of framed photographs or prints of various sizes stylishly arranged to make one big "unit". Or, a series of larger photographs/prints framed in a row. So you could have: bedroom doors, large plant directly next to them, another plant at the end of the hallway (before it turns), and a cluster of photos in between. For the next stretch, the length of the hallway between the turn and the bathroom, I would do the opposite of what you did before - if you did a cluster of smaller photos by the bedroom doors, then do the large pictures here, or vice versa.

Other ideas: a long occasional table next to the bedroom doors and plant? It might be nice to have a place to store the odd bits that turn up here and there, and you can arrange some nice pottery/etc. on top. Then you can do pictures along the bathroom stretch of hallway.

The lighting will help. Focus it on the areas that have something to look at, which will help minimize the empty space.

Good luck! And link to some photos if you can so we can see what we're working with!

[smeisnotapirate]

Ok, I drew a pic of the layout :http://www.twitpic.com/17fleb

In addition to the walls I marked "blank", the entire staircase is enclosed and blank. The shaded area is our bathroom, the bedrooms are on the outside - 34" doors for all of them.

Thanks so much for the ideas! The hallway is narrow, so there's not much room for a table, but we may be able to get away with mounting a board along one spot or putting a plant in the corner of the hall-turn.

[SoulCakes]

Ya know... I would consider hanging a full-length mirror between the bedroom doors at the top of the stairs, in the corner. Then if you put a plant in the corner opposite, at the end of the hallway where it turns, the mirror would reflect the image of the plant - so it'd be like having two! Then I would hang some pictures on that long wall between the other two bedroom doors and the plant in the corner, and then maybe some more on the little short wall next to the bathroom door (so when you turn the corner in the hallway as you're going to the bathroom, you'll be facing the photographs.

I'd like to take your image and draw on top of it, but I'm waaay too tired right now! At any rate, I bet you can make it look really nice.

[smeisnotapirate]

Oh, I wish we could do that! There's a lightswitch dead in the center between those two bedrooms, so a full-length mirror is out for that spot. I really do like the plant idea in the corner - need to research plants that can live with ZERO light.

ETA: The "little short wall" by the bathroom door is actually 8ft long. That should give you some perspective on how LOOOONG this hallway is.