After seeing contrast trim in Chris Loves Julia’s home, I knew immediately I needed to dip my toe – er, paintbrush – into that timeless “trend”! The hallway turned out to be the perfect place to add some contrast trim paint detail.

Beige trim and doors are on either side of a thin white wall

One of the first things we did in the house was change out the baseboards in the main area. Granted, I planned on doing this slowly, but when my dad visited in 2019, he had other plans. AKA I went to the store, and when I returned he had removed all of my baseboards LOL. Six weeks before I was to host a 20 person Christmas party. This lead to also redoing the trim around the doors to get closer to the craftsman style that I wanted. No pressure to get that done at all, right?

A hallway with 4 doors, 2 on either side. Walls are painted white and trim is beige. On the right side of the hallway, there are 2 rows of pictures with 3 in row. The frames are black with black and white photos.

My goal for the hallway was to make it look brighter, classic, and still have some character given the main living room area has so much. Carrying the chunky baseboards (8inch) from the living room into the hall, and a little more detailed headers on the door would get me partway there, but not all the way. As well, the hallway is seen from so many angles, that choosing different colours or tones would not feel consistent. Lord knows I wasn’t going to be painting the 12 foot high walls in the living room anytime soon!

Hallway photo taken from floor angle. Light brown wood floors with beige trim and white walls. A blue photo of flowers is at the end of the hallway

Contrast trim is the perfect solution and would easily blend into the rest of the house. Based on the paint cans in the basement, we figured out the walls in the living room were Edgecomb Gray. A quick google search showed that it was fairly close to the ever-popular Accessible Beige that everyone is using right now. I genuinely like the Edgecomb Gray that is in the main areas as well. It changes light throughout the day, and really is a “living” paint colour. Continuing a pre-existing house colour from into the halls is a decision I am still happy with a year later! In fact, I just painted the doors to match the trim and am SO happy with it.

For the walls, I chose white. I wanted a colour that would lend itself as an easy transition to the attached rooms. Warm and bright were what I was searching for! I decided to try out Alabaster, which I am lukewarm on, to be honest. In some lights it is PERFECT and everything I wanted. Then sometimes it looks a little yellow depending on the time of day. In the future, I might repaint it the Simply White we used in the main bedroom.

A cold air vent, made from trim, with vertical slats.

Joe was kind enough to make a custom cold-air vent for us out of extra trim. It was installed after I painted though, so it needs to be re-painted to match the rest of the trim! Whoops…

We also installed new door handles on the doors, changing it from the gold/brass round knobs from the 90’s to these matte black ones. Even with the small detail, it makes the space immediately feel more modern.

A door open against a wall is shown. The wall is white, with the door being a light beige. It has a matte black door handle.

Is contrast trim something you think about incorporating into your home?

If a pattern is more your style, make sure you check out the sponge wall treatment I did in this closet!