Victorian hall (needs to be grubby child proofed)

[beyondthepaleandinteresting]

We are in the process of (slowly) renovating our Victorian terraced house. The hallway was one of the first things we did when we moved in 18 months ago, and I was very happy with it - we put in wooden flooring downstairs, had the beautiful staircase renovated and put in a nice runner leading in to carpet on the first and second floors.

The house is over 3 floors, and we wanted to keep the wall colour the same the whole way up. The hall is light on the 2nd floor (there's a large cupola in the roof), quite dark on the first floor, and takes all its light on the ground floor from a large south facing window on the turn of the stairs, meaning that on sunny days it feels lovely and light, but on dark days can feel quite gloomy.

We had the walls painted in a F&B Cornforth White colour match, and the woodwork white (doors are the original wood). It looked lovely, and worked so well with all of the different kinds of light.

18 months on, and my 3 children have absolutely ruined it. The walls look filthy - there are grubby finger marks all of the way up the stairs which no amount of scrubbing can remove, and when the sun shines all I see is grease. We've run out of the colour matched paint, so I can no longer touch up.

I think I'm going to have to have the hall repainted, which is galling (it was by far our most expensive room to decorate) but I can't bear to look at it any longer (it's really, really bad). I think my options are:

1. Repaint as before, but use actual F&B paint so that I can buy more and touch up / repaint to dado height only as required.

1. Paint a darker colour below the dado rail which runs up to the first floor. Below the dado rail is worse than above. I didn't really want to do this originally, but I wonder if it would show the marks less? Or would a dark colour show greasy marks more?

1. Paint in a very washable paint - I'd rejected this first time round due to cost (the price we were quoted was very high compared to standard matt emulsion) and the finish I was looking for, but a less chalky finish would still be better than the handprints!

Either way I will absolutely be reading my children the riot act about smearing spag bol on the walls etc...

Suggestions welcome!

Why can’t I spell dulux?

The trade paint (Valspar) you can get colour matched in B&Q is fantastic . Ask their advice for washability

So glad I asked here, this has been really helpful. I think that Dulux Diamond Matt looks like a really good option. I've had a google and am trying to like Anaglypta (I can see it would be practical!) but I just can't quite get there... we need to keep the hall light as have some quite dark rooms coming off it (e.g. a navy sitting room), and I think Anaglypta would work better with a darker, heritage colour below the dado rail?

To the poster who asked about our runner early on - we had it made from a carpet we liked (and then used the same carpet on the first and second floor landings), it's got a very subtle pattern to it (a tiny very subtle sort of check) - it's two tone Berber twist, made up of a cream colour and a pale grayish sagey green... it's quite hard to describe but works very well with Cornforth White and adds a little warmth.

Here's my pinterest anaglypta inspiration if you change your mind!

harriet that's gorgeous!