Stacy Miller Design Featured on Houzz: Entryway Design Ideas

How often do you look at your home? I mean really look at it. Try, sometime, to enter your home as a visitor would and imagine what your guests see when they first approach. For many, setting up an entryway is nothing more than an afterthought. All too often this area — where first impressions are set — becomes a dumping ground for shoes, bags, sundries, and clothing.

Here are some simple tips to improve first impressions by enhancing your home’s entryway design.

Warning: This may be easier said than done. In today’s world, life moves fast and sometimes we just need to grab & go! When we return home, we can’t wait to offload backpacks, shopping bags, shoes, and coats. If this rings a bell, consider adding an armoire, a console table, or similar landing surface, that’s equipped with baskets, decorative boxes, or trays to stash away small items. You might install decorative wall hooks or even an interesting coat tree to get bigger items off the ground and help keep your space clutter-free.

Prefer that your guests remove their shoes? Then offer them a comfortable place to sit. You can find beautiful benches and ottomans that serve double duty as both a perch and place to store unsightly, but necessary, items. Or, use this seat to add visual interest with an interesting pattern, color or texture.

Mirrors are wonderful decorative elements. They can expand small spaces and enhance light in tight areas. Mirror frames can add visual interest by offering texture, character, shape, and even color. And, of course, when properly placed, it doesn’t hurt that those in a hurry can use the mirror to steal a quick glance of their reflection!

Applying a beautiful wallpaper or painting an accent wall can also add flare to your entrance. Such an attention-grabbing accent can set the tone for what’s to come in the rest of the home or it can stand alone to give it more poignancy.

Great lighting should never be overlooked. If there is a path to your door, provide landscape lighting — hard wired or solar — to light the way. Many advancements have been made in outdoor lighting and exterior fixtures now allow you to set the stage before your guests enter. Once inside, make sure your entryway is well lit with overhead or ambient lighting that might be supplied by pendants, table lamps or sconces. Install dimmers so you can adjust your lighting to set just the right mood.

If you have the wall space, hang an attractive or personally meaningful item. This might be a painting, a three-dimensional object you love, family photos, a mirror or an heirloom that represents all who live in your home. Maybe even make it a conversation starter!

No matter what type of flooring you have, you likely want to protect it from outdoor elements, be it sand or snow. A walk-off mat might do the trick but adding a small rug or runner in your entry couldn’t hurt. Decide what appeals to you most — a natural texture, pattern or color — and let the rug get the job done.

Capture the attention of visitors before they enter and enhance your curb appeal by painting your front door a color that you adore or that simply makes you happy! Be sure that featured color is repeated throughout your home or that, at a minimum, it coordinates with your interior color palette.

The next time you arrive home, take a minute to look at what your visitors will see when they arrive at your doorstep, relating to your entryway design. This different perspective may afford you new ways to implement some minor changes that make a really big difference.