A place to hang your hat

We often underestimate the importance of the foyer decorating it only with a view to its functionality. Yet the entrance hall has the potential to make us feel immediately welcome or, at times, uncomfortable both in other people's homes and especially in our own. Let’s see how to make the most of it.

“Home is the place to hang your hat”, once said the English writer and traveller Bruce Chatwin (Sheffield, 1940). These few words are enough to describe someone who feels good wherever they are: so why not make sure our guests, as well as ourselves, feel immediately comfortable we get home?

Foyers are the intro to your home, the first room you enter and the last you leave, it is where you hang your coat and get a taste of the style of the rest of the house. But most of the time these spaces are the ones to which you pay the least attention: how, then, to make it something unforgettable?

Generally, these rooms are limited to a corridor or hallway, which provide access to the various rooms. One way of immediately characterizing this room can be to paint the walls or give the floor a more special look, in order to differentiate it from the rest of the spaces in the house.

If the entrance is small or dark, the wisest choice is undoubtedly using light paint colors for both walls and furniture, as well as picking the right artificial lighting to compensate for the lack of natural light. Wall or ceiling lamps are a good solution to avoid taking up floor space in the case of small spaces; and a beautiful table lamp resting on a low sideboard can be a game changer and create a cozy corner to greet guests when they return after a long day at work. There is no better setting to place a vintage coat rack. Perhaps paired with an umbrella stand for rainy autumn days.

The entrance hall is also the ideal place for a console table. As functional as a table, but definitely less bulky, it can be equipped with several shelves and drawers to keep the essentials: house and/or car keys, headphones, last-minute jewelry to enrich your outfit, etc. A final check on your look before opening the door can be facilitated by a big mirror placed just above the console table: the mirror is another very useful trick to make the space appear optically larger; a precious frame or a particular shape will then automatically make the entire room more personal and unique.

These may appear as simple details, but are actually distinctive elements that tell a lot about the home and the personality of the person who lives there.

intOndo tips

Here are some useful elements that will make this space truly unique:

a carpet: of course the doormat is practical, the carpet at the entrance is aesthetic, but it also has the ability to ideally delineate the space, it should be chosen carefully in shape and material.
A well proportionate seating: it is useful to provide support (a chair, an armchair, a bench...) both for a potential guest and for those who simply have to tie their shoes.
Some purely functional elements, such as electric panels, are often set in the foyer and they are not the best thing to see. We suggest to conceal them with a thickly framed picture or any other decorative wall panel.