If anyone knows how to take a tricky space and make it look exceptional, it’s Clare Collective ambassador and designer Lauren Hom. So the tall, narrow entryway leading into her creative studio? It was just another opportunity to have fun with color–and of course, as is Lauren’s signature move, to paint a cool mural on the wall.

Before Lauren decided to revamp the entryway, she was using it to store canvases and it was starting to feel cluttered. “I wanted the entryway to feel considered, and like a more colorful welcome rather than just getting bombarded by canvases when you open the door,” she tells us.

Before

Lauren’s solution? To create a fun vibe from the moment anyone steps in the door with a floral mural on the wall and a two-toned approach through the rest of the hallway.

After

By being thoughtful with her mural design, picking a playful color palette and adding more functional elements, Lauren turned a once forgettable space into a total showstopper. Read on for all the details about how it came together.

Take A Considered Color Approach

When planning the color palette for the entryway, Lauren made sure to keep the colors she used in the rest of the studio in mind. She started with two shades of green, OMGreen and Current Mood, that she’s used in other areas of her studio, but then added new colors from there. “I wanted to nod to other areas in the space without it feeling too matchy-matchy,” she explains. 

Strike The Right Balance

Lauren makes it a point to go bold without going overboard. She used Blue’d Up, a beautiful purple-ish blue, and High Vibe, a luminous light green, to create contrasting stripes in the hallway, with Meet Cute, a light pink on the baseboards. “I chose that combination because the colors felt muted enough, but still stood out against the greens,” Lauren tells us. “They were vibrant, but they weren’t neon or over the top. That’s what’s great about Clare colors–none of them feel too out of place. They all kind of go together.”

Let Existing Elements Guide Your Mural on the Wall

The main reason Lauren’s mural looks so seamless in her space? She worked with what was already there. “Thinking about the elements that you either already like or can’t be changed is a helpful starting point in deciding where to put colors or design elements,” Lauren says. Case in point: her wall sconce is even more charming as the centerpoint of the flower in her mural, which was painted in Golden Hour, a sunny yellow.

Lauren also recommends thinking about functionality as you map out your mural design. For example, she didn’t include any extra intricate elements on the wall across from her utility closet, knowing that she’d want to add hooks to hang coats and a space to store shoes, explaining, “I didn’t want too much of a visual clash, even though I’m a maximalist!”  

Want more wall mural inspo? Additional ideas, this way:

• This Paint Mural Looks Like Wallpaper at a Fraction of the Cost
• Painting a Wall Mural is Easier than You Think–Here’s Proof!
• This DIY Geometric Accent Wall is the Happy Medium Between Minimalist and Maximalist