[ad] A simple hallway half-painted wall inspired by Changing Rooms with Dulux

[ad – this half-painted wall makeover is a paid partnership with Akzo Nobel/Dulux]

I have fond memories of cult British decorating show Changing Rooms – the programme where couples would swap houses with their neighbours and makeover a room. As a teenager I would sit down each week and be hooked, imagining what I would do with someone else’s blank canvas. You could say it was the start of my love affair with interior design. It led me to paint my teenage bedroom walls purple and silver stripes (true story!) and stencil stars on the ceiling (stippling techniques and dodgy paint effects were all the rage back then…). And while my tastes have somewhat improved since the Nineties, I still get that urge every now and then to refresh my home and flex my creativity. Because the one thing Changing Rooms showed was that it doesn’t take much to makeover a room – all you need is a little imagination and a bit of DIY know-how.

With Changing Rooms making its come back on Channel 4, I’ve teamed up with show sponsor Dulux to transform a space in my home and show you just how quick and easy it can be. Inspired by the show, I’ve turned one boring, unloved corner in my hallway into a bright, welcoming haven.

You know I’m all about simplicity. Not everyone has time for a full overhaul or show stopping makeover (as a busy mum with barely enough time to wash my hair, I certainly don’t!), but with the Dulux Simply Refresh range you can freshen up a space with just one beautiful lick of paint. Yes one! Not two, or three. And we all know how nice and satisfying a clean, freshly painted (or half painted) wall looks.

I’ve put it to the test and Simply Refresh really does cover well with one coat – I managed to get this half-painted wall done in the time a nap takes (that’s my baby napping, not me sadly). Meaning you can now literally freshen up your home in your lunch hour. The result – I’ve fallen back in love with my hallway and it’s made me realise that I really don’t need to keep putting off all those little projects. They’re often not as hard or as time consuming as you think they’ll be.

For this simple refresh (see what I did there), I’ve chosen to do a half painted wall in my hallway. The space in question is right in the middle of our long, narrow hallway; a pretty standard and tricky feature of Victorian terraced houses. It’s a thin thoroughfare used to get from the front to the back of the house, and over time it had got a bit lost and forgotten. I don’t say this often about minimalist spaces, but it was just a bit boring and lacking in personality.

I had seen lots of ideas for half-painted walls on Pinterest and thought it would be the perfect way to brighten up this area of my hallway and inject a hint of colour. A half-painted wall is ideal for a busy, high traffic area in the home like a hallway. It adds a feature (much like a dado rail) where there might not be one, and hides a multitude of sins in a space that gets scuffed and marked on a daily basis. And it couldn’t be easier to do.

There’s 3o core colours in the Dulux Simply Refresh range as well as 15 ‘Feature Wall’ tones. For my little project, I chose Overtly Olive, a soothing pale olive green that could almost be considered beige in some light.

Below you can see the before and after.

BEFORE

AFTER

To create a half-painted wall, you will need:

– a tape measure or ruler and a pencil
– a spirit level
– masking tape (I like Frog tape for a nice crisp line)
– a paint brush
– a small roller and tray
– the paint of your choice

METHOD
– Measure your half wall using a tape measure or ruler. Mark a straight line with a pencil. The height of your half-painted wall will depend on a number of factors – how tall your ceilings are and what height your furniture is. You want your wall to have impact and not appear out of scale with the rest of the features in the space. I chose a height of 1m, which was approximately half the height of the opening to the kitchen just next to it. It also meant it gave a comfortable distance between the top of my console table and the line of my half–painted wall.

– Apply a line of masking tape to your pencilled line so that you can get a nice sharp edge to your half-painted wall. I’ve also seen people do a scalloped edge or zig zag shapes, but that’s maybe for the more experimental.

– Paint your half-painted wall with a brush or small roller.

– With Dulux Simply Refresh, it’s one coat and you’re done!

– Wait until the paint is dry then gently peel off the masking tape to reveal a beautiful clean finish. Ta da!

And that’s it, it really is as simple as that. No fancy techniques or time-consuming DIY. It really is amazing what paint can do to a room. You don’t need a lot of money or tools to have a big impact.

My Overtly Olive wall has lifted this previously dead area and made a compact space into a room in its own right. The half-painted wall helps ground the section of wall in between the kitchen and back door, adding an intriguing feature that catches your eye as soon as you walk through the front door. It’s the perfect backdrop for a wooden bench where you can put on shoes before going out and a minimalist console table with seagrass baskets for sorting and storing shoes, keys and everything else that accumulates in a hallway. Add some fresh flowers, a piece of art and a few cushions, and it becomes a welcoming entrance that’s homely and stylish.

The Overtly Olive wall even matches the legs of our dining table, tying in this previously lost space with the rest of our home. I’m so in love with this little makeover that I’m tempted to paint the rest of the hallway in the same soft green tone.

And the best thing? If the wall gets too marked with muddy paws or dirty fingers, I can easily give it another coat to brighten it up with Dulux Simply Refresh. I’ve got my paint brush at the ready.

Have you been watching Changing Rooms? Has this convinced you to have a go at a little DIY project of your own? What area of your home do you think could do with a simple refresh?