The Staircase

There are some areas of our home that I know exactly how they should look and there are others that I have no clue about.  One of these areas is the portion of empty wall above our staircase.  See the following (and please excuse the poor quality of the photos, the mirror that needs cleaning, and the dust on the fan, mmmkay?)

 

You can kind of see the top part of one of the sofas in the last photo. Other than the mirror and one other framed picture on the wall to (your) the right, the walls are pretty bare.  My problem is this:  The area that includes the stairway, upstairs hallway, entry way, and living room is very open.  I don't want to overdo it with pictures/stuff, but at the same time it looks so empty as is. 

Also, whoever build the house we live in did a horrible job of sealing the drywall joints.  If you squint in the top picture, you can see a little line that's in between the fan blades- trust me, it's far more noticeable in person.  So the second purpose of putting something on the staircase wall (above the stairs) is to draw attention away from that monstrosity.  I also, feel like I'm limited to what I can put on both the wall above and below the stairs because they are in the same line of site.  

I stumbled across this before/after post on Design*Sponge today and fell (hard) in love:

Design Sponge

I think this would be the perfect solution for our stairway wall, but I don't think my husband will be as easily convinced.  So now, I'm thinking of adding symmetrical, organized elements or one large element to one wall (probably above the staircase) and a mismatch of smaller items (sans mirror, it will move to a new location) to the wall below the staircase.  My first thought was to line the top staircase wall with mirrors.  Somewhat inspired by this:

Elizabeth Martin Design via Katherine on Pinterest

Apartment Therapy via Emily on Pinterest

Country Living/ My Sweet Savanah via Nikki on Pinterest

I think I like the simplicity of the second picture best, but using mirrors instead of framed art.  I picked up some cheap round mirrors from Target (on clearance) and I'm experimenting with them right now to see if really like the look or not.  Hope to have some results soon :)

The Staircase