Entryway Decorating And Mudroom Organizing Ideas + An Opportunity To Make A Difference

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Welcome people into your home with these easy entryway decorating ideas as well as mudroom organizing tips to make your space beautiful and functional.

First impressions are everything. When people walk into your home, what’s the first thing they see? Is it warm and inviting? Today we’re going to share some entryway decorating and mudroom organizing ideas to help you create a warm and welcome appearance that will wow your guests.

We’ve also got a great opportunity for you to extend that warmth and care to others around the world this holiday season through a special partnership. So keep an eye out for that later in this post!

10 Entryway and Mudroom Decorating Ideas | Ideas for the Home by Kenarry

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Hey there, Idea Insiders! I’m Carrie, the chief blogger here at Ideas for the Home by Kenarry. For the past month or so, I’ve been virtually inviting you into my home each week to take an up close and personal tour. We’ve been going through our main floor makeover and sharing all the changes we’ve made to our ranch style home in the past year.

You can see all the before photos and read about our home makeover ideas and plans. At a high level though, the makeover project includes our master bedroom, the living room, dining room and kitchen. For today’s tour, I’m going to take you through our entryway decorating ideas and mudroom organizing tips.

10 Entry Way Decorating and Mudroom Organizing Ideas

Grab yourself a cup of coffee and let’s imagine for a moment that you’ve just stepped foot inside my home.

As you know, the entryway of your home is the very first thing people see when they walk in your front door. These tips and ideas will help you create a warm and welcome environment.

Idea 1: offer hooks for coats and purses

After you’ve greeted your guests, the very next thing they’re going to want to know is where to put their coats and purses. Having hooks readily available for these items is a great way to make people feel welcome as they immediately know where they can keep their belongings.

Before:

Love this idea for a DIY coat rack! It is so easy to make one yourself to hang on the wall by your front door or entryway using this step-by-step tutorial.

Several years ago I shared the tutorial for how to make a farmhouse style coat rack. It was important to me that we put it back up after the living room walls were painted. (The wall color in the after pics is Stone Isle HGSW1496 from Sherwin Williams, which is a light neutral gray.)

After:

Entryway with laminate wood floors and a farmhouse style coat rack in a home

Even though we have a coat closet just inside the door, people NEVER use it. I think there must be some unspoken rule of etiquette that you just don’t open other people’s closet doors. Before we had the coat rack, people would just toss their coats over the banister of our staircase.

Before:

Bright yellow entryway showing the back of a front door and a coat closet. Above the closet it says

The oak of the grandfather clock didn’t fit well with our natural maple woodwork so when we did the main floor makeover I moved it to another spot in our home. The white mirror that used to be above our fireplace mantel looks like it was made for that spot.

PRO TIP: Using mirrors in your decor reflects light back into your home and gives your space a larger appearance.

After:

Front entryway in an open concept living room, the top of a staircase with natural maple newel posts

Idea 2: Personalize your decor

Nothing says welcome to our home quite like the smiling faces of the people who live there. We’ve got our boys’ annual school photos proudly displayed above the coat rack. If their smiles don’t brighten your day, I’m not sure what would!

You could also use the space above your coat rack to create a farmhouse style gallery wall and incorporate things like a large metal monogram letter or a customized sign with your last name showing when your home was established.

Farmhouse style coat rack in the front entryway of a home

idea 3: Incorporate seasonal decor in your entryway decorating

Displaying decor to go with various holidays throughout the year brightens up an entryway and makes the space feel more cozy. For example, I change out the wreath between the boys photos throughout the year.

This is another good opportunity to personalize the space. The photo below shows my fall burlap wreath that I made with ribbon I had leftover from our wedding. My favorite wreath for this space though is the scrap fabric Christmas wreath I made using sentimental fabric from one of my family’s annual holiday traditions.

Farmhouse style coat rack in the front entryway of a home

You can see I’ve even added a festive seasonal touch to some of the coat hooks!

Close up of oil rubbed bronze coat hooks on a rustic white rack

The oil rubbed bronze double coat hooks from Hickory Hardware are gorgeous on their own as an entryway decorating idea. However, I thought sliding beaded fall napkin rings over some of the hooks would dress it up for the season. These are similar.

Just don’t put napkin rings on EVERY hook or your guests won’t hang their coats there and will start tossing them over a chair or a banister again!

Close up of oil rubbed bronze coat hook on a rustic white rack

Idea 4: Don’t forget a welcome mat

A small rug for entryway decorating just inside your door gives your guests a spot to wipe their feet as they walk inside. No one intentionally wants to drag a bunch of mud or snow into your home. Once inside, most people will take their shoes off at the door.

Before:

Love this idea for a DIY coat rack! It is so easy to make one yourself to hang on the wall by your front door or entryway using this step-by-step tutorial.

Before the main floor makeover, we had a small tiled area by our front door that helped with wet and muddy shoes too. However, once we put up the coat rack the flooring looked disjointed.

Love this idea for a DIY coat rack! It is so easy to make one yourself to hang on the wall by your front door or entryway using this step-by-step tutorial.

As part of the main floor makeover, we replaced all the flooring in the entryway so it’s now continuous and unified.

After:

Entryway of a home with farmhouse style coat rack

We went with Allen + Roth Chesterfield Hackberry laminate flooring from Lowe’s (#936283) and are so pleased with how it looks! I feel like the space just flows better from the entryway into the living room and kitchen now.

Open concept stairway with natural maple newel posts and white spindles

It even extends down the hall to our mudroom. The opening you see to the right in the photo above is the hallway that leads to our mudroom.

Before:

Yellow hallway next to a staircase. The hallway leads to a mudroom and a master bedroom.

Idea 5: Provide coat hooks by additional entry points

Now imagine for a moment, instead of coming through our front door, you actually came into our home through the garage. In that case, you’d be walking right into our mudroom.

We weren’t initially planning to make any big changes to our mudroom organization or decor as part of the main floor makeover. However, once we got started we realized you can actually SEE our mudroom from the living room. Leaving it yellow was no longer an option.

Before:

Adding coat hooks, hat racks and baskets to a mudroom or back hallway is a great idea to create organization out of chaos.

Having hooks for coats, purses and bags by all the major entry points in your home is absolutely essential to creating a welcoming environment. This is true even for mudroom organizing where it’s mostly your own immediate family who enters and exits from there.

We put up coat racks in the mudroom several years ago and didn’t want those to change when we were making entryway decorating changes. However, we figured we better paint the walls the same light Stone Isle gray as everywhere else since it’s visible from the living room.

After:

Farmhouse style mudroom with coat hooks in a home

Idea 6: Provide a spot to hang keys

Besides coats, it’s also helpful to have a spot to keep keys in your mudroom. When we worked on mudroom organizing a few years ago, we put up a small wall mounted key rack by our garage door. This makes it easy for us to quickly grab the car keys we need right before we walk out the door. The one we picked also has a basket for outgoing mail so we can actually remember to take it out to the mailbox.

Key organizer next to a garage door in a mudroom

idea 7: Bench and cubbies For storage and seating

For mudroom organizing, it’s also helpful to have a bench where people can sit to take their shoes on and off. You can have extra coat hooks above the bench and even cubbies with storage baskets for pet leashes, hats, lint rollers and other things you often use before you head out the door.

Ours was custom created for the space by our home builder. If you have the space, you can buy one already made for a quick way to implement this idea. A decorative one is especially nice for entryway decorating.

Before:

Adding coat hooks, hat racks and baskets to a mudroom or back hallway is a great idea to create organization out of chaos.

Before we painted the walls, our natural maple storage bench and coat rack blended with the yellow walls. Now that the walls are light gray, the woodwork really POPS and looks beautiful.

After:

Natural maple coat rack and bench in a mudroom

Idea 8: use a Shoe rack for entryway decorating

Keep shoes tidy in your entryway or mudroom by providing a shoe rack for family members or guests to use. Start a family rule for keeping your mudroom organized: If the shoes don’t fit on the rack, the owner of the shoes needs to put them away in his or her bedroom.

Before:

Adding coat hooks, hat racks and baskets to a mudroom or back hallway is a great idea to create organization out of chaos.

For people who don’t reside in your home, having a little rug by the shoe rack gives them an obvious spot to put their footwear too.

After:

Mudroom organizing tips include having plenty of coat hooks and a shoe rack to keep the space neat and tidy.

Idea 9: Hang baskets for drying Winter hats and mittens

Living in the Midwest, we solved two of our family’s winter problems by hanging wire baskets on our mudroom wall. The wire baskets for mudroom organizing prevent hats and mittens from getting lost or separated so our boys can find them easily before school in the morning. More importantly though they allow wet winter gear to dry faster so we don’t end up with a stinky musty mess.

Wire baskets to hold mittens and scarves

We also have a bunch of double utility hooks which can be used for winter gear too or to hang baseball caps, sun visors, umbrellas and other smaller items.

Hooks used to hold baseball hats alongside wire baskets for winter hats and mittens help to organize a mudroom

Idea 10: have lower hooks for children

If you have children like we do, it’s also important to have coat hooks at their level. This allows them to take responsibility for hanging up their own coats, snow pants and backpacks after school.

Shoe rack in a mudroom along with coat hooks for winter coats and snow pants

what if we don’t have coats and warm gear?

As we move into the winter months here in Michigan, I start to think about what a privilege it is to have hooks and baskets to dry our coats, hats and mittens. Or more importantly what a privilege it is to actually have coats!

Having coats, sweaters and other gear to keep our children warm when the weather gets cold is something that most of us take for granted. But imagine for a second what would life be like if you or your kids didn’t have those things?

Meet Thato

For many children in Lesotho, a country in southern Africa, having coats is a luxury that most cannot afford. Thato, a little boy from Lesotho describes the struggle like this:

These days when my grandmother wakes me up to prepare for school, I feel like bursting into tears to show her that I do not want to go to school. On our way to school, I come across shady places because of the trees and I feel like biting my teeth because of the cold.”

Thato is the youngest child in a family of three. They lost their single mom a year ago, so now he and his siblings live with their grandmother. She is able to provide food for them through pension money, but that doesn’t cover all of their family expenses.

When their mother was alive she worked in the neighboring South Africa factories which helped to supplement the grandmother’s pension. However buying clothes for the family has always been a challenge.

Children in Lesotho receiving towels to keep them warm to get to school through a partnership between World Vision and Thirty-One Gifts
Thato is first in the queue. He cannot afford to miss the blanket. (©2019 World Vision)

In Lesotho the average winter temperature can fall around 30-45 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s -1 to 7 degrees Celsius). Thato said, “I nearly dropped out of school because I was beginning to feel like it has turned into torture.”

Can you imagine if you couldn’t provide a warm coat or sweater for your children? Or if your own kids said it felt like torture to go to school in the winter because they were too cold?

Meeting The need

My husband Kent and I have been long time supporters of World Vision, a non-profit humanitarian organization that helps children, families, and their communities to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice.

Each year for Giving Tuesday, World Vision partners with Thirty-One Gifts to double the impact of their financial donors. When someone donates to World Vision on Giving Tuesday, Thirty-One Gifts matches those donations up to $1 million in the form of products that World Vision can use in their programs.

For example, last year for Giving Tuesday, when World Vision saw the need of Thato and more than a hundred other boys and girls in his community, they partnered with Thirty-One Gifts to provide warm towels as special gifts for the children. The kids, who are part of World Vision’s Lesotho Matlameng Area Programme, are able to use the towels as blankets to wrap around their shoulders on the walk to school. With these towels, it’s no longer painfully cold for the children to get to school.

Children in Lesotho receiving towels to keep them warm to get to school through a partnership between World Vision and Thirty-One Gifts
As temperatures dropped to minuses, World Vision Lesotho Matlameng Area Programme distributed towels to school children to help keep them warm so they can brave the cold to get to school. (©2019 World Vision)

Primary education is free is Lesotho and education is the key to a better future. Although a blanket/towel might seem like a simple solution, it helps the children overcome a major obstacle to learning and is having a tremendous impact.

Remember how Thato said he felt like it was torture to go to school? Well, thanks to this generous gift, he now says “This blanket has come to my rescue.” World Vision told us the towel he received has kept his dream alive of becoming a pilot.

how you can help

This post is not sponsored by World Vision or Thirty-One Gifts. If your family is like ours, you’re looking for great organizations to support on Giving Tuesday where your financial donations can have the biggest impact.

We’re passionate about World Vision and know first hand what a great organization this is. Kent and I will make $0 compensation from your donation. We just personally felt called to share their story and thought you might appreciate the opportunity to get involved.

You can help World Vision to have a tremendous impact in the lives of children and families as well. Any gift given to World Vision on Giving Tuesday, December 3, will be matched with a donation of product (up to $1 million) from Thirty-One Gifts — helping communities around the world with items to support new moms, deliver medical supplies, and keep girls in school. Give a gift that empowers children today!

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What’s Next? 

While you’re here, be sure to check out these other home decor projects on Ideas for the Home by Kenarry® –

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Easy Decorating Ideas for Your Entryway and Mudroom | Ideas for the Home by Kenarry

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2 Comments

    1. Thanks, Isabelle! That’s a good thought about safety and should definitely be a consideration depending on where you live.

      Best wishes,
      Carrie
      Ideas for the Home by Kenarry

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