3 Tips for Designing Your Home’s Entry Way

While it may seem like our home remodel only began 5 months ago, the planning stage that includes working with an architect and engineer is the part of the process that takes the most time. There are many aspects of home building and remodeling to take into consideration before you begin. For us, it was not only new build, but re-structuring the inside our current home. With the plan being to gut our current existing home in order to update the plumbing and electrical to code, knock down walls and then add on to our square footage, we had to really think through a great deal of stuff. They say you don’t know what you don’t know and let’s just say, before we got started, there were a lot of things we didn’t know we didn’t know. Thankfully Kyle has lived through 3 home remodels growing up so he had a great general idea around things we should consider.

We thought it would be helpful to share some tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way that are important to consider during any re-model, even if it’s not a Farmhouse Industrial home remodel like ours.

BIGGER IS BETTER:

It’s really important when working with your architect, engineer, and designer that you really think about the entry way to your home. What are people going to see when they first open the door to you home? Does it give off a “wow” factor? Here are a few tips we’ve learned along the way that can help you when designing your guests “first look” in your home. We recommend starting by installing a taller and wider front door and raising your ceilings to 9ft or higher. In our home we vaulted our entry way to allow it to blend nicely with the rest of our kitchen and living room space and while you can’t see it reflected in the pictures above, our plans call for us to add in a 90″ or 7 foot, 6in front door. This will really open up the space when friends walk through the front door.

Heres a side by side look of our entry way…

DON’T GIVE IT ALL AWAY AT ONCE:

We knew going into our remodel that we wanted to open up our kitchen and family room space, vault the ceilings and really show breathability in the space. But, one of the best pieces of advice we were given along the way is to still keep an element of surprise when people enter your home. What does that mean? Let me tell you.

Originally we discussed having the kitchen and living room space be completely visible when you opened our front door. The only downside to that is that it’s a lot for a person to take in when they enter your home. By adding in the wall you can see framed to the left of the entryway, we were able to make the focal point the sunroom and backyard when you walk into our home. Then when you round the corner, the focus becomes the open kitchen, dinning, and living room space.

This is a benefit for 2 main reasons. One, when we had originally planned to have the entire space be open beginning at our front door, we didn’t account for wall space we would be loosing in the kitchen. By adding that extra wall at our entry, we gained room for our fridge, floor to ceiling cabinet storage and additional counter space! Two, we love that now when people come through our front door their vision is focused on our sunroom and outdoor space first, which we love!

NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH LIGHT:

I’ll say it again: there’s no such thing as having too much light! There are two kinds of ways to really ensure that your home is well lit: creating natural light and using canned lights in your home. Natural light comes from having large windows in main living spaces or spaces you spend lots of time in. We also recommend skylights if your roofline allows it. When we began designing our living and dinning space, it was important to us to have a great deal of natural light because we needed it not only for that space, but also our living room space as well. We originally added large windows in our dinning and kitchen area, but found that once we added on our sunroom off the living room and covered outdoor area, we lost some of the natural light those windows gave off. We ended up adding in three skylights in the kitchen space and four in the sunroom space from VELUX to really bring back in that natural light. We chose to work with them because they have more standard sizes and options than other companies and they have solar powered venting and shade and black out blind options customized for your project. You can find them at your local Home Depot or order straight through their website, with a 3 business day arrival. VELUX is known as the “no leak” skylight, which makes them the perfect option no matter what climate you live in year round.

You will never regret having too much light, but you will always regret not adding enough.

Now let’s talk canned lights. I love being able to light up my home and not worry about dark or shadowy spaces. You can always divide up your lights on different switches or put them on dimmers, but it’s much more frustrating to try to create light after the fact to eliminate those shadows. When it comes to light, less is not more! Visibility is important and if you’re going to spend time on every detail of your home from design to styling, at the end of the day you want to make sure it’s well lit so people can see it and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

In the photos above you can see the cut outs for our skylights. This week we are installing our VELUX skylights so be sure to follow us at alissamcircle on Snapchat and Periscope for behind the scenes sneak peeks of their installation.

Have you completed or are you in the middle of a remodel? I’d love to hear your thoughts on what tips you have for designing the entry way of your home.

xo, Alissa

Come follow me on Snapchat and Periscope (alissamcircle) for a weekly behind the scenes look at our home remodel.