Thanks for both your comments. Those ideas are really nice Rachel.   We have original parquet flooring in the hallway, so we will be keeping that and getting it sanded (which should make it lighter once the dark varnish is removed). The carpet will be going (I’m sure it was nice in its day!). We were originally planning on stripping back the stairs to have the wooden steps and a neutral/light carpet runner. However, there are so many layers of paint on the steps (some of which we believe is lead) so we won’t be able to strip back to the wood and are just going to repaint the stairs white and have the carpet runner like you mention.     I have attached some more pictures of the hallway. The main dilemma, as you say @colourhappy, is choosing a combination of colours which feels welcoming – not too dark and not brilliant white!   The areas we will need paint for are:   Lower hallway panelling Walls above panelling in lower hallway Stairs and upper hallway wall Picture rail in upper hall Wall above picture rail in upper hall Woodwork (doors etc)   There are lots of different areas so struggling to find the right combination!

There are two very different looks and colour schemes going on in my mind. The tiles are earthy looking with creams, browns and blacks and the walls and runner look like they are from another house, and are cooler greys. There are possibly a few options: 1. Keep the wall colour but change the runner to something that relates to the tiles but looks good with the walls. This could be something earthy like a sisal runner that would look good with the walls and also a dark wood mirror. The browns of a mirror and sisal would help to tie it together. (See sisal with similar tiles below). A sisal with a border (see image) could pick out a tile colour, this could be the red/brown. 2. Going a step further but still keeping the walls, you could do the above and also pick out a dark colour from the tile such as the charcoal colour and repeat this somewhere, such as the bannister and post and possibly door. (See dark painted bannister and post on image below). 3. You could replace the runner with sisal and repaint the walls, but you probably don't want to do that. Repeating colours in probably the best way to tie it all together and the stair runner needs to be something 'quieter' to allow the tiles to shine. Good luck.

Thank you Saddaf and Sonia, our hall is South East facing and the front near the door gets a good amount of light but on a cloudy day the way leading to the dining room, which only has one window is quite dark and we have a lot of woodwork there so we're thinking that area needs to be white. We've found another idea which we absolutely love, do you think we should go with this colour scheme but paint the skirting boards black and the rest of the wall the off white and the dado rail the same colour so it disappears or should we paint the wall under the dado rail black too? I've posted more pics of our hall so you can get an idea.

Love that dirty pink with grey and black colour scheme. Chic and different. Hope you'll keep posting updates :-)