Your entrance hall gives visitors a glimpse into your home. It's the place they stand when they make their first impression of your home. And, more importantly, it's the first place you step foot when you get home after a long day. It should feel welcoming and homely, encouraging yourself and your guests to feel at ease upon entering the house.
Our entrance hall isn't up to much, at the moment. It's the next job on my (very long) list of things to improve. My plan is to decorate the hall and landing next year, hopefully, because I think it's the job that will give the house the biggest boost. I've already spent way too long on Pinterest looking for inspiration and trying to work out what we could do in our cramped entranceway. With hours of research logged, I figured I may as well share some of my thoughts here. So, here are five things I'm planning to include in my entrance hall:
1. Shoe storage
Laurie has one pair of shoes. He wears them until they are just a pair of ratty laces falling around his bare feet, then he hurls them in the bin and buys another pair and the whole cycle begins again. If he lived alone, he wouldn't need any shoe storage, like, none at all. Ebony, on the other hand, has a whole closet full of shoes. She has wellies, school shoes, jelly sandals, pretty sandals, boots, party shoes, trainers and canvas shoes. That's a lot of shoes. I'm somewhere in between. And Ember has recently taken up walking so she'll be adding a few pairs to the mix pretty soon.
At the moment, we have our shoes neatly lined up against the wall (for about five minutes, then Ember gets hold of them and hurls them into a huge pile to make it easier for her chew them all), but when we decorate, I'm getting some proper shoe storage. I would love something like this shoe storage bench from Quercus Furniture, though I don't think it will fit in my teeny tiny hallway. Sob.
2. A mail tidy
We live in a terraced house on a busy-ish street which means we get All The Pizza Leaflets through our door. We get more than our fair share of Leb Dem leaflets, all the takeaway menus and a crazy amount of those plastic donation bags through our letterbox each week. Plus actual real life mail occasionally. A mail tidy helps to keep things organised and stop the hall looking cluttered. Nobody wants to arrive home to a messy pile of clutter.
3. Feature flooring
After many nightfeeds spent scrolling through Pinterest, I have decided my entrance hall needs feature flooring. I love the old fashioned floor tiles you sometimes find in these sorts of houses, though, unfortunately, mine doesn't have them, so I'd love to create something equally as eye-drawing there. There are loads of different options available online. At the moment I'm leaning towards something black and white to create a contrast as you walk into the house.
4. Pictures
If the entrance hall is your house's only opportunity to make a good impression, I think pictures are in order. Just a couple of framed prints on the wall to give people something to look at on their way in. Entrance halls can sometimes feel a little bare and devoid of personality, but a couple of simple prints can solve that.
5. Coat hooks
Wouldn't it be great to live in a house big enough to have a mud room where you could store coats and wellies? Oh, if only. But, failing that, coat hooks in the entrance hall is the way to go. It means people can rid themselves of their outdoor wear at the door so they don't clutter up your home. The only thing I need to get better at is decluttering my coat hooks because I currently have two winter coats hanging there and it's July. Must do better.
This is a collaborative post.
Photo by Evelyn Paris on Unsplash