How to Dress Up and Paint Hallway Mounted Cabinets

Stencils

• Painting a stenciled design is one of the easiest ways to dress up a hallway-mounted cabinet, particularly if you’re not very artistic. Stencils are available in a variety of shapes and patterns at craft and home-improvement stores, so you can find the ideal design for your home. For a simple look, choose a stencil in a single shape, like a leaf or flower, and paint the image just in the center of the cabinet’s doors. For a more detailed look, choose a stencil with a design that you can paint across the entire face of the cabinet, such as a flowering vine. Try painting the cabinet with a base coat that matches the wall color, and filling in the stencils with a bold, bright shade that adds a subtle pop of color to your hallway.

Stripes

• If you prefer a less detailed design for your hallway-mounted cabinet, dress it up with a striped pattern. Stripes are easy to paint, even if you’re not artistically inclined, because you can use painter’s tape to mark off sections and keep the lines straight. With a striped design, the colors you use have the greatest impact on the cabinet’s finished look. If you prefer an understated design, start with a base color that matches the hallway’s walls, and add stripes in a second color a shade darker or lighter.

  For a bolder look, choose a second color that contrasts with the base color, like a brown and white or a blue and yellow combination. However, if you prefer a funky look, choose several colors for the stripes to make your cabinet truly stand out. The size of the stripes can also affect the cabinet’s look; pinstripes are good for a subtle look, while thicker stripes can give the cabinet a bolder, more whimsical feel.

Dots

• Like stripes, dots make up an easy design to paint on a hallway-mounted cabinet when you want to give it more personality and flair. Keep the scale of your cabinet in mind when choosing the size of your dots, though, since a larger cabinet will look better with large dots and a smaller cabinet will look best with small dots. You can use any circular object in your home that's the right size to create the dots by tracing around it with a pencil. For a more dimensional look, vary the size of the dots across the cabinet. As with stripes, the colors you select are important. Try painting the cabinet a neutral white or cream shade, and using your wall color to fill in the dots for a fun but simple look.

Faux Finish

• If stenciled, striped or dotted designs provide too graphic a look for your tastes, try a faux finish to spruce up your hallway-mounted cabinet. Faux finishing is a painting technique that creates a textured finish on your surface by using special tools. You can use faux finishing techniques to make your cabinet’s surface look like marble, suede, leather, silk or denim. For the simplest project, though, try sponging your cabinet. Paint it with a base color, and choose a second shade to mix with a glaze. Once you have the paint and glaze mixed, you can either use the sponge to apply the mixture to the cabinet for a highly textured finish -- or sponge off some of the paint-glaze mixture you’ve applied with a roller, for subtle texture.