The Power of Paint: Brightening the Upstairs Hallway

I am continually astounded by the power of paint.

Our house had one shade through kitchen, foyer, stairwell and upstairs hallway and it just sucked in the light.

We knew pretty quick we wanted to change up the color of the walls.  Those test patches on the wall on the left of the stairwell were there for over a year.  I thought a muted grey would be a good choice (surprise).  Craig held out the option on a lighter tone.  He was spot-on correct on this.  We ultimately went with Behr's Chocolate Froth.

I really don't know what the previous color was, but it was vampiric.  This hallway has no light by itself - at night it was like a subway tunnel.

Oh, those are our built-in gates.  I re-stained those at the same time as the handrail and banister.  Don't it look pretty?

I hate carpet.

Supplies out, faceplates off.  Let's PAINT!

This is the #1 reason why we didn't do this earlier.  The stairwell is just so high!  I finally found an edger thing combined with an extension pole and it almost does it.  There are still some non-painted spots at the very top, I couldn't get the proper leverage to do it 100% perfect.  It does it for the short term though.  Also, that light will never be switched out.

I may possibly have painted this without prior 'approval'.  We had gotten some quotes to get the inside and outside of the house painted, and it was like $3000 for the interior ceilings and this hallway.  Ouch.  So I went ahead and painted it on a day off in December.  It was intensive with all the cutting in - about 6 hours from start to finish.

Omagoodness SO MUCH BETTER!

It's funny, we finished late in the day so we didn't really see it 'done' immediately.  Just making the trip from our room to Celeste's room in the middle of the night it was already SO much brighter!  It's amazing.

We put up 5 woodblock prints from Utagawa Hiroshige along the long wall.  They are from the Famous Views collection - these are all in and around Edo.  We put them in a seasonal set.

Not great in terms of light - but this is the truest representation of the color.  Please excuse the clothes waiting to be washed at the end of the hall.