What colour for dark hall & stairs?

[GnomeDePlume]

Looking for some advice please?

We are getting ready to paint our hall, landing and stairs. They havent been painted in about a decade and boy, do they need it!

The problem is that we have a tall thin town house so practically no natural light.

All the pictures I have seen show halls with masses of light. I dont want bright white but dont want to end up with something dingy. Or do we embrace the darkness?

What colour would you go for?

Oh dear, we've just done most of the house in Valspar! hope it's been fixed. I'll let you know in 6 months...

@Joeytribbianiz

Apparently painting a hallway dark can make the house seem more spacious, because it makes the rooms off it seem larger in comparison when you walk through. I'd embrace the dark walls and paint it a really lovely dark colour and offset it with lots of lamps, big mirror, light colour furniture.

I love the idea of doing that! Unfortunately our hallway was extra narrow due to original dark wood panelling on all walls - it felt like a coffin and most people commented that it felt intensely dark and oppressive 😬

I think dark and north facing rooms are much better if you embrace the dark. The front of our house is north facing and for years we tried loads of different light colours and nothing worked, the shadows change the colours and make everything look dingey.

Now my hall is shades of grey the colour looks the same as it did on the tin and my north facing lounge is Safire Salute on one wall and pale green and white wallpaper on the other walls. It looks so much better.

I love the look of hallways with dark up to a dado rail then light above but I dont think that will work in our noughties three storey town house.

There is literally no natural light unless someone leaves a door open!

Interesting that the light and space range still exists. I bought a tin to try out in the hall. It did work but DH vetoed the colour (off white of some sort). Ended up using it to paint the downstairs toilet. Yes it does show every hand and foot print (DD2 I think).