21 small hallway ideas to help you make the most of your space

You can never have enough storage in a small hallway. "Multi-functional furniture like benches with hidden storage compartments are excellent for keeping shoes and accessories neatly out of sight while providing a convenient seating option," says Claire.

If all those practical considerations leave you without room for decoration, colourful floor tiles will do the job.

Speaking of colourful flooring – if you are without wall space, don't forget that your floors and ceilings are viable decorative surfaces too. Even the plain staircase here is enlivened with a jute runner trimmed in bright red.

If you keep all the usual hallway clutter stored away, you might strip your space of some of its purpose. Here, the usual hooks and racks are in place, but hold decorative bits and pieces that are far more fun than coats or umbrellas.

Pictured: Country Living Scirocco Carpet at Tapi

You can get away with intense colours in a small hallway as it's a transitional space that you only ever pass through.

This rich olive green creates a neat transition from outside in, and note too that the colour is taken up onto the ceiling for a totally enveloping effect.

Pictured: Walls painted in Bancha No.298 at Farrow & Ball

Brighten gloomy hallways with internal windows or glazed doors that recruit light from adjacent spaces.

Carrying your flooring through to adjoining rooms imparts a sense of flow, so your hallway will feel more integrated into your main living areas.

Pictured: Interior designed by Claire Garner Interiors

This hallway employs a similar design device with its internal windows, but uses the stream of natural light to lift its punchy reds and purples.

For more colour inspiration, take a look at the 6 paint colours that make a small room look bigger.

A gallery wall is a natural choice for a narrow hallway, and you can be adventurous with your selection without worrying about matching your colours or frames to a lot of furniture.

Maps, photographs and quilts are nice alternatives to traditional wall art.

"The best flooring choice for a narrow hallway depends largely on the property’s style and décor. If the space lacks natural light, lighter-toned oak flooring is an excellent option to brighten the area and create a more open feel. Opting for wide, extra long planks can further enhance the sense of space by reducing the number of visible joints, making the hallway feel less confined," Ian Tomlinson, MD of Chaunceys Timber Flooring tells us.

Pictured: Bristol Tectonic® Oak in Buttered Toast at Chaunceys Timber Flooring, interiors designed by House Nine

Rear hallways that lead to a garage or garden are often the most practical of spaces. Leave a walkway roughly the width of your door and fill in with a run of cabinets – bespoke joinery like this offers a workaround for particularly narrow spaces.

We love the use of colour here that draws focus to the length of the hallway, and in doing so detracts from its modest width.

Whites brighten more than any other colour, but there is a risk of stripping a hallway of warmth or character.

Wood acts as a counterbalance in this restored cottage in Buckinghamshire its surface texture tempering the intensity of pure white. Wall panelling will have the same effect in lieu of floorboards or wooden doors.

One of our favourite uses for a small hallway, albeit perhaps the least practical. Interior designer Sarah Southwell turned this seemingly unusable space into a fabulous home bar, with little more than a few shelves and a jazzy curtain.

Conventional decorating wisdom might have this light-starved hallway doused in those brightening whites. But the owner of this Edwardian home in Sussex leans into the moodiness of it all with deep aubergines and browns.

In a narrow hallway, curtains can replace cupboard or connecting doors that open inwards. They have a quaint and slightly rustic feel, especially when fashioned from leftover fabric, and it's quite attractive if you're relaxed with your measurements and let the fabric pool on the floor.

Plants make for a wonderful welcome and a nice transition from the outdoors in. In lieu of real-life plants, a botanical wallpaper creates an ample connection between the indoors and a garden beyond.

Colour drenching is a design device that sees walls, woodwork and ceilings saturated in a single colour. This is a bold statement in itself, but it has the added effect of blurring the boundaries of a small space, so low ceiling or pokey proportions recede.

Farrow & Ball’s Sudbury Yellow gives this dark and narrow hallway a sunnier outlook.

Whilst artwork has wonderful impact in terms of colour and pattern, mirrors make all the difference to how bright and expansive your home feels – diffusing light into dark corners and creating the illusion of space when strategically placed to reflect windows and doorways.

There is an argument for containing all your decoration to a single area, freeing up the rest of your small hallway.

A console is the natural centre of gravity here – take your decoration up to the ceiling in the form of an XL print – and it doubles as a convenient landing spot for keys and parcels.

Pictured: Avalon Console and Oblong Tray, both at TROVE by Studio Duggan

Giving up floor space to a loveseat might seem indulgent, but it is a useful perch when putting on shoes of for giving little ones a once over before leaving the house.

The scale of the sofa matters – this one is compact and upright so it feels substantial without being bulky.