Our hallway is titchy. You barely clear the stairs when opening the front door and a narrow passage runs alongside the balustrades. We do however, have a lovely open space under the stairs so while the entryway isn’t vast and airy it’s not as cramped as it could be.

Before we moved in our plan was to build some form of elaborate understairs storage and seating combo to store shoes, hats, scarves and all the various outerwear regalia, however visitors commented on how the exposed area was so spacious we decided the way forward would be to keep it uncluttered and open.
Once again we used Jali to build a bespoke cupboard, though this time rather than the built-in version we went for in the living room we chose a stand-alone version. As sad as it sounds we spent one evening laying out our shoes in a row and measuring the height of our boots and trainers to make sure the finished product would be the perfect shoe cupboard. What an exciting life I lead but that’s the beauty of going bespoke after all.
Several weeks later the MDF flat pack arrived ready to be erected. Once built James primed and applied two coats of Farrow and Ball’s Pavilion Grey after the very helpful folk on Instagram responded to my plea for a soft grey. When I was in the Dulux Trade store they had an unwanted mixed dark grey sample on sale for the pricey sum of £1 so I snapped it up and used it for the interior. The knobs are just super simple chrome ones from Screwfix. We ushered the unit in place and I’m pleased to report that the cupboard can hold well over twenty pairs of shoes. Please ignore the state of my Stans as they are utterly filthy after a garden digging session.
On the walls we went for Dulux Trade Supermatt in white once again. The shelves were a home-made affair built from three strips of wood to create a mini picture ledge and painted with F&B Pavilion Grey. There are loads of tutorials on Pinterest if you fancy making your own. The Ikea picture ledges are 10cm deep and due to the door frame to the left (into the utility room) we needed something far slimmer. The awkwardly placed light switch is masked by the ledges and means I can adorn the walls and still open the door to get to the washing machine. As our homemade ledges are so skinny it was a struggle to find frames thin enough to fit so I went on the rob around around the house for treasures to trim the shelves. The Rapper’s Delight print is from Etsy. I’d recommend buying the download version if you fancy getting your own as mine went AWOL several times.

The metal and wooden hooks came from Bert’s in Brighton several years ago and were previously in the man cave at the old house. The chair is one of two which I originally bought to go in our old summerhouse. Best bargain goes to the lamp I picked up from The Range which is a dead ringer for the White Company one and at £22 it’s a smidgen of the price. The hexagonal mirror is also from The Range and the gorgeous scented soy candle from Willow and Honey. The basket for storing accessories came from HomeSense.
There’s always one thing that takes an absolute age to find and for this ‘room’ it was the lighting. We needed four lights as there are two pendants on the landing too and due to their positioning they needed to be relatively compact. During one of Cox and Cox’s flash sales I found their metal pendants. I’ll be honest they were a complete pain in the bum to install as the mechanism was very difficult to get apart (according to our electrician) but I love how understated they are and the striped flex is a nice touch too.
For floor coverings, I brought the jute runner from Matalan for our previous hallway and the stairs have been carpeted with the same grey, neutral carpet as the bedroom.

So there you have it, my small yet perfectly formed hallway. I’m hoping the cupboard and shelving have given you some space saving ideas. Did anyone else struggle with a small space? What kind of storage options did you go for?