Home Sweet Home on a Budget: Simple Entryways

Hello!  It’s Ruth from A House in Holland, stopping by today to offer some tips for spiffing up the first thing people see when you welcome them into your home:  the entryway.

If you’ve ever done a Google search on “foyer” or “entry”, you have seen a lot of pictures similar to this

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or this.

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Gorgeous, right?  The sweeping staircases, the soaring ceilings, the fabulous flooring and designer furniture are the stuff that dreams are made of.  Dreams being the main idea there, because for most of us, that’s not reality!  The average size of the American home is 2400 square feet if it was built after 2004.  If the home you are living in wasbuilt before then, it’s likely to be less than 2000 square feet.  So, if you are like most American’s, your home’s entryway is designed to rob the rest of the house of as little square footage as possible.  Space is one thing, but function is yet another.  Multiple things happen within the first few feet of your front door.  Guests are welcomed with an impression of the rest of the house.  Items like coats, purses, and shoes are often removed.  Tools that have been used while people are away from home–like keys, leashes, backpacks, etc.–are set aside.

For most of us, creating the perfect welcome into our homes requires balancing form and function to create a first impression that is both practical and pretty.  Here are five bloggers’ entryways that do just that.

320 Sycamore

Melissa of 320 Sycamore had a plain-jane foyer:  a short hall with blank walls and a small closet.  She wanted the first thing that people saw when they entered her home to be things that were meaningful to her family, and she needed a place for gloves, hats, keys, and sunglasses to land.  Her solution?  Filling one of those blank walls with a gallery of family treasures, then bringing in a bedroom dresser to add storage.

Young House Love

Over at Young House Love, John and Sherry crashed a reader’s home and found this little nook by the front door.  Open shelving keeps the small space from encroaching on the room the way a closet would, and the pretty baskets hide away more than a few gloves and shoes that would otherwise get left in from of the front doo.

The Pleated Poppy

Lindsey’s home doesn’t have a separate entry, over at The Pleated Poppy.  You can see the front door opens directly into her living room.  Lindsey created whimsical coat and scarf storage with a collection of coat hooks, and integrated the entry space into the living space with a display of lovely artwork on top of the dresser that holds other necessaries.

71 Toes

The entry area into Shawni’s (of 71 Toes) home isn’t large.  But in the small space she has, Shawni makes some important statements about what is important to her family.  Simplicity rules this entry, letting a family motto and silhouettes of the children take center stage.

Mmm Crafts

A door, a closet, maybe a table with a lamp…entries can be predictable.  Larissa of Mmm Crafts found a way to make hers really pop with this sweep of decorative plates on the wall.   They add such an unexpected element to the entry, and provide a lot of visual interest to the space.

So, when it comes to your own entryway, just remember that you, too, can create storage and style without using a lot of space.

Have you re-done your front foyer lately?  Hung a new wreath on the front door?  Potted a few ferns on the porch?  If you’ve done any project to spruce up your porch, patio, or entry, we would love to see it!  Join in next Saturday for the very first Home Sweet Home on a Budget link party!