Empty out the furniture and fixtures there, including the lamp and ceiling fixture.Use a storage bench instead for a place to sit and remove shoes. Shoes or backpacks can be dropped inside it. You can get much better lighting from a fixture that has lights to wash the ceiling and to light the floor. What is under your stairs? Do you have room to install some storage there? Pull out stair drawers might work for shoes, and you might add some pull outs under the stairs if they are suited for it. A foyer should serve to introduce you, your style and the decor to be expected in the adjoining rooms. I would key furnishings and paint to what is going on in the rooms left and right of the foyer. Everything I see hanging on the walls is hung too high. The general rule is that the center point of a single piece or a grouping should be 5' above the floor. If the first piece at the bottom of the stairwell is hung at that level, you can use painter's tape to tape the center line all the way up the stairs and arrange pictures above and below the line, with a few centered right on it for a more pleasant arrangement. Not knowing much about the rest of your home or your personal style, I might suggest you paint a soft color like Sherwin WIlliams Sea Salt.

You can leave the handrail the same distance from the wall as it is now. Leave it connected to the newel post at the top; remove the newel post at the bottom, and add what's called a 'return' to anchor the bottom end to the wall. Then add a couple of brackets going up the stairs. The challenge is that the return should match the profile of the handrail, in order to blend, but check at the home center or a lumber yard/mill to see if you can match it (take measurements/drawings/close-up photos, etc.). As for painting the stairs--be careful with "fun" graphics. The treads and risers need to be clearly defined and regular. For example, a plaid or check that doesn't match the tread and riser exactly at each step is a trip hazard and may not meet building codes. People need to be able to see the treads clearly even without paying attention to them. Walking is an unconscious activity and we need to make it as easy as possible. Confusing patterns are a menace. In NYC, they put new edges on treads on one stairway at one train station that were designed to make them less slippery. However, they also made it more difficult to discern the edge of the tread. In 6 weeks, more than 1,400 people fell down those stairs. Then they redid them. Over 90% of injuries on stairs happen during descent. I highly recommend Bill Bryson's great book 'At Home--A Short History of Private Life'. The NYC anecdote above came from Chapter 14--'The Stairs'. Fascinating and amusing book. My house is 100 years old, so I feel your pain dealing with the changes and additions that happened over time.

Aqua might be a nice wall colour too. I think your kitchen floor tiles are nice. White in the sitting room would be good too and I would ditch the brown carpet in favour of a pale grey or else some natural sisal or similar, some houseplants and colourful artwork. I'd also replace or recover (even with slip covers) the sitting room suite with a grey or taupe cotton or similar and add a couple of zingy, colourful scatter cushions. If you do all this, it may not be necessary to paint the fireplace though, by all means do this if you want. Just be aware that once you paint brick, you can't really get the paint off i.e. it's virtually impossible to bring it back to its natural colour. As this is modern brick and only a fireplace that's not so much of an issue though as it might be in a period house with old brick.

Love some help with this as need to finish it soon one way or another! Thanks