Hilary Farr's Sleek Updates For An Outdated Staircase & How To Snag The Design

Hilary Farr, star of HGTV's "Love It or List It," is no stranger to working with spaces that feel stuck in a time warp, instantly making visitors feel like they traveled back to the past (but not in a good way). A major part of her job as an interior designer is to modernize her clients' homes so they can fall in love with them all over again. On Season 17, Episode 11, Farr encountered exactly this scenario, with an outdated entryway and main staircase that looked straight out of 1992. Before Farr got her hands on it, the room was outdated with tan walls, two-tone wainscoting, decorative scroll moldings under each stair tread, a swooping honey oak handrail with a scroll detail at the bottom, traditional turned balusters, and honey oak flooring.

An entryway is your guests' first impression of your home, setting the tone for the rest of the space from the get-go, so you really want to make sure your foyer stands out. If you have a big, beautiful entry that feels grand and welcoming, great! But what happens when you are in the same boat as Farr's homeowners, with an entryway that simply does not reflect the times or the family's aesthetic? Take a page out of Farr's book, and update your staircase with simplified lines and modernized finishes to make the space feel brand new.

After Hillary Farr transformed the homeowner's entryway with her design prowess, the revealed space featured a chunky, squared-off newel post in place of the outdated scroll. She also removed the decorative tread moldings and swapped the traditional spindles for more substantial square balusters. Although she kept the profile of the handrail similar (or perhaps the same), she simplified the way it connected to the higher side of the railing by creating straight runs of handrail instead of the original swoop and scroll look. Finish-wise, she updated the space with a darker, more elegant wood stain on the floors, treads, and handrail, as well as painted the wainscoting a bright white and the walls a soft neutral.

To achieve this same look, give new life to your outdated balusters by swapping them out for a profile with simple, squared-off lines for a clean, modern look. Similarly, if you have a rounded newel post, you can simply box it out with a square decorative surround, instantly modernizing and grounding the staircase. Update 1990s honey oak wood tones by sanding and refinishing the underlying red oak in a refined, darker stain (be careful with lighter stains on red oak as they can quickly turn pink – stains with a good amount of green in them can help counteract that red or pink undertone). Finally, a fresh coat of paint can work absolute wonders to bring an outdated space back from the past.