All the hall things

How to transform your hall from throughway to destination

- Natasha Radmehr

Hands up if the hallway was bottom of the to-do list when renovating your home. This is a charge I was certainly guilty of. I was so eager to get stuck into the more exciting rooms - the places I'd actually be spending time - that my hall became an afterthought. Yet according to Emily Smoor, founder of Edinburgh-based interior design practice Fantoush, it should really have been tackled first.

"The hall is the arterial route of your home, so if we make it the first thing we design then we know all the subsidiary rooms leading off it will relate to it - you don't want to finish with the hall only to realise that there isn't one colour that ties all of these rooms together," she explains. "Plus, the hall sets the tone for a house; it's a calling card for the rest of the space. I like making a statement, whether it's with a bold colour or piece of art - something that creates intrigue and makes you want to see more."

Before all of that, though, Smoor focuses on three essentials: flooring, lighting and storage. Sanded pine floors, she says, tend to wear through very quickly; they're fine in other parts of the home, but for an area that sees heavy traffic you should consider more durable materials such as oak, flagstones or tiles. "A lot of companies are making wood-effect porcelain tiles, which are good if you want something that's easy to keep but has the soft aesthetic of wood," she suggests.