I Gave My Boring Rental Hallway a Bold $100 Makeover (It’s Circus Chic!)
I’ve been a renter my entire adult life. Being a renter who loves color and maximalist style has always been a bit of a challenge, so, mostly, my style has come from the furniture and tchotchkes I shove into my space.
But after moving to LA and finding the chillest landlord ever, I finally went all in with paint in my apartment, which I share with my fiancé, who also loves color and whimsy. Our hallway project started with a folding shelf I inherited from my grandparents.
I started with a striped shelf.
I’ve had this little wooden shelf since college. It’s traveled with me from Savannah, Georgia, to New York City and now Los Angeles. It’s had so many identities over the years: a bookshelf, a coffee cart, a bar cart, and now a shoe shelf after a major makeover.
I used leftover paint (Benjamin Moore’s Springtime Peach) from my kitchen to cover the shelf, but because I love color and pattern so much and was looking to make my home, well, even crazier, leaving the shoe shelf one color wasn’t really an option, in my opinion.
I began hunting for the perfect complement to Springtime Peach. After many trips to our local paint store I finally settled on a coral-y red (Benjamin Moore’s Bird of Paradise). I painted a bold stripe, which was really a test for the larger project I really wanted to do: the hallway.
Paint was more budget-friendly than wallpaper.
Our hallway was just fine before. I tried to make it visually interesting by adding gallery walls. I organize all of the art in my home by genre (the kitchen has food-related art, the living room is all TV- and film-related), but this hallway has all the leftover art, and I wanted a way to tie it all together and make it feel finished. Even the with colorful art and mismatched frames, the hallway still felt blah.
My dream was to use a bold stripe in the hallway. I had been looking at peel-and-stick wallpaper samples, but all the options seemed out of my budget. Plus our walls have a slight texture, so I worry that wallpaper would do more peeling than sticking. Once I finished my beloved shoe shelf, there was no hesitation. I had to paint the hallway. (Can you tell I really hate wasting paint?)
I didn’t worry about keeping the stripes exactly even.
To be totally honest, I can be kind of chaotic when it comes to DIY projects, and I love to paint, but I hate the prep work. So, for this project, I “sort of” measured. The walls are not perfectly straight, and most of the floors in our house are uneven. (Some may call it annoying, I call it quirky!) All that is to say, I wasn’t too precious about getting the stripes perfectly even, but I did try.
First, I painted both walls with the Springtime Peach color as a base so I wouldn’t have to tape the wall twice. (Anything to not tape!) Once that dried, I did my best to make markings across the wall in even blocks from floor to ceiling. I then enlisted the help of my fiancé to tape out my stripes, again, using no level, just trusting that my eye could make a straight line.
I painted two coats of Benjamin Moore (Bird of Paradise) and immediately got excited. It took about two days — drying time included — to finish the two walls. It was giving circus chic, and I was in love.
Walking through the hallways now feels like a page out of Eloise at the Plaza, which to some might be a weird nightmare but to me is the exact aesthetic that makes me feel at home. And my fiancé loves it, too, so naturally, we’ve immediately started talking paint colors and ideas for our bedroom. Stay tuned for that inevitable project soon!
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