As you may have gathered from my previous posts, I blimming love decorating. As such, even though we spend hardly any time in there, I put a load of effort into making my hallway and cloakroom pretty but practical.

The Practical Bits

One of the first decisions we made not long after we moved in was to knock through one of the hallway walls to install a door so we could access the garage. Rich assured me this process would take four days. FOUR MONTHS later, the job was complete. (This is in no way a criticism of our builder. The delay was due to us not getting off our arses and doing the finishing touches like painting the woodwork and installing the couple of strips of amtico flooring to the new doorway). It looks brill and saves me from being rained on when I lug our laundry to the washing machine.

In terms of storage, my hunt for the perfect hall table was the bane of my life. As you can see from the photos, it had to fit a funny little space which, at 90cm, was half the width of most hallway tables. I had my heart set on finding a mini version of this John Lewis console table but it turns out that no such thing exists. I’m pretty sure I considered every other conceivable option. I looked at bedside tables (too deep), hanging shelves (not enough storage), I even bought an Ikea chopping board with the intention of adding some hairpin legs. And then, after nearly two years of searching, I stumbled across this Georgia shoe cabinet from Debenhams. It’s nothing like what I envisioned but it works and I am happy.

The Pretty Bits

I’m not one for using bright hues in my home so deciding to wallpaper the back wall of the cloakroom in a fuchsia-pink flamingo print was a radical step for me. I am so rock and roll. However I figured that a downstairs loo is the one room in the house that you are allowed to go a bit crazy in. I also LOVED Osborne & Little’s Penguin library wallpaper, and their Quentin Blake Cockatoo wallpaper.

I knew I wanted a rug for the hall to make it homely but had no idea what shape or style to go for. And then following my post about wallpaper woes, a couple of you clever readers suggested that the jute rug might have been the issue, so I moved it from the dining room to the hallway. It worked a treat and the rustic-ness of the rug works so much better in this space.

The lamp was a bargain from Sainsbury’s (on a completely unrelated note, how lovely are the kids’ clothes from Sainsbury’s? I could quite easily have bought the whole of the girls’ range when I was in there yesterday). The ceiling pendants are another supermarket bargain – Tesco – I also bought them in ‘stone’ for our bedroom and ‘ecru’ for the landing.

We picked up the painted wooden elephants in Chiang Mai, and I spotted the retro travel prints when I was in Padstow. I love buying nick nacks for the home when I’m travelling or on holiday; every time I see them they bring back lovely memories.

The circular mirror is from M&S, the city prints are greeting cards from Rifle Paper Co (a great website if you’re looking for art), and I think my next purchase for the hallway is going to be these cute wooden mouse hooks.

Looking back, the amount of time and effort I put into trying to get the space just as I wanted was a bit silly really, considering how little time we spend in there! Has anyone else spent years hunting for the perfect furniture? Are there any other gems for the hallway that I need to know about?

STEAL THE STYLE