The Amazing Power Of Paint: A Complete Hallway Transformation

Never underestimate the power of paint! We love our newly brightened hallway and I can’t wait to share the before and after pictures with you!

Paint is a powerful tool. And it never ceases to amaze me.

Our upstairs hallway used to be so dark we practically needed a flashlight to see anything!

It had brown walls, brown doors, popcorn ceiling, no windows, and a single boob light with a dark yellow cover. Not a recipe for a cheery, inviting space.

But our bedrooms are upstairs. And we wanted to enjoy going up there to relax and unwind.

So thanks to the power of paint (and some elbow grease) we completely changed the feel of this hallway. And we love how it turned out.

Here’s what we did:

First things first

Before we could add any lights or paint the walls, we had to remove the popcorn ceiling.

We’ve done this in every room throughout our house. It’s a mess, but it’s not hard. (We weren’t worried about asbestos since our house was built in 1994.)

First, we lined the floor with plastic. Then we used this garden sprayer. The popcorn comes off in sheets and is so easy when the ceiling is good and wet.

I recommend using these drywall taping knives to scrape it off.

We let everything sit overnight so it could dry before sanding the rough patches.

Then we added some canned lights.

Updating the stair railing

By this point, I was itching to pull out the paint! I was so excited, I got that part done pretty quickly.

The hallway looked pretty good with the walls and ceiling painted. But we took it a little further. Since we’re updating all the trim and doors in our house, we started on that next.

We planned on doing this part of the stairs when we remodeled our living room. But we decided to wait until we had the time to do it in one shot.

We didn’t want anyone falling down the stairs!

The handrail and balusters are the same as the lower part of the stairs, but we did the newel post a little differently this time.

We used MDF to build around the existing one, just like we did before. But there’s less space up here. So we simplified the design and made it smaller.

Adding balusters here was much easier since it was straight. No need to worry about angles this time!

(I spy a little helper…)

I’d like to say we were completely done in a day, but that isn’t even close to true. We have 4 kids so…

But at least we got the most important part done quickly!

The finishing touches

My husband used wood filler and caulk to get the stair railing looking good.

Then I painted while he worked on trim and doors.

Side note: We painted the doors outside with this sprayer before hanging them. I love the smooth, professional look you can only get from a sprayer.

We used MDF for all the header trim and matte black fixtures for the doors.

The final result thanks to the power of paint

Here’s how everything turned out:

I’m so happy we went from this:

To this:

So much better right??

Have you ever lightened up a dark space before? How did it turn out?

Resources:

• Wall paint: Benjamin Moore Gray Owl, lightened by 50%
• Ceiling paint: Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace
• Doors, trim, stair railing paint: Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace
• Black handrail
• Balusters
• Doors & knobs: from a local shop.

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