Design Tip Tuesday

I received a question from Design Hole reader, Bacchus who asked, “How do you create an attractive entry to a home when the front door opens up directly into your living room? The challenge being that the room is small to begin with, say 13 x 20.” This is an excellent question because it addresses an area of psychology called Human Factors, or Ergonomics.

Basically, people will treat the four foot area around the front door in the same way – no matter what you put there. It’s a sort of “cone of silence” (which you will understand if you’ve ever watched Get Smart). If you invade this space with furniture, it will just look wrong. And you’ll be stumbling over that dang armchair every time you answer the door! So what should you do? Here are two options.

The first is to do nothing (see below) except perhaps add a rug or some interesting tile in an interesting pattern so that you save your hardwood flooring. However, make sure you arrange your furnishings so that you have enough space to greet people at the door and for them to enter. Also, make sure there is a passage from the front door through the living room.

But that’s so boring ! Why not create a little privacy and drama? Let’s look at the second solution, below.

Here I’ve added some built-in bookshelves, which turns to lend some privacy to the front door. You have enough room to greet guests easily. But you also have a wall to create some drama. Hang a beautiful painting on the new wall. Install 2 dimmable downlight spots so that one lights the painting and the other lights the entry. I’ve added a console table by the large window, but you could add extra seating here if you prefer.

As you can see, the loss of one foot of floor space isn’t so bad because the benefit of the storage and entrance privacy more than makes up for it. In addition, if you don’t have a den or a family room, you could install cabinets in the central area and hang your flat panel TV above it. The cabinet can hold your DVD player, etc.

I put one chair here, but you can have more. I didn’t spend too much time on the furniture, since that wasn’t the issue. It’s easy enough to move a chair to find a book on the low shelf, or get into a cabinet. Here are two examples from one of my projects.

This is a “family room for grownups”. The depth of the shelves is 12-inches. The back cabinet is easily accessed by sliding the chair over a little.

The room is only 11-feet wide! These chairs face another set of built-ins with a flat screen TV on the wall. (Did you notice the red ceiling?) It’s a small room, only 11 x 14 feet. Yet there’s seating for 4 and it’s a cozy retreat.

I hope this helps. I think that if you study how you use the space you’ll see that the area around the door is “wasted” no matter what you do. So, make it work for you by adding a real entrance and gain storage in the bargain. So, thank you, Bacchus, for an excellent design question.

What do you think of this solution? Do you have a different idea?

Don’t forget that next Tuesday I will answer another design question. Do you have something you’d like me to write about? Send it along by either posting a comment or emailing me. The more information you give me (photos, measurements), the better answer I can give you.