Creating a warm and inviting foyer establishes the character of your home and what is yet to come. Repeating a theme and revealing your personality and style expresses how you live and conveys a welcome feeling throughout the home.
Often we get away from using the front door on a daily basis and come in the back entrance or through the garage.
If that has been the case with your home, start at the front and experience your foyer the way a visitor and your friends coming in from the outside do. If there is more than one entrance evaluate each. Even if the back door is only used by family, you can create a special welcome area upon entering.
Your entrance wants to be attractive but not in a staged manner, and tie into the rooms it connects to.
Welcome to an inviting foyer:
- Paint the foyer area different from the adjacent rooms. The entrance gets a lot of traffic so it will take its toll on pale colors. The use of warm colors is less likely to show scuff marks, or consider a wall paper in a pattern that doesn't overwhelm the space.
- Place foyer lighting on a dimmer and lamps on three way to alter the mood. While the entrance to the home needs to be lit well, you don't want it to be glaringly bright and this way you can control the amount of lighting.
- Use a welcome mat on the outside to wipe your shoes, better yet, kick off your shoes once inside the home so you don't track in what you might have picked up on outside, and step in on a colorful rug to a foyer floor that is tile or hardwood.
- An inviting foyer is an ideal place to hang your favorite painting, or display a gallery wall of artwork or photographs, and hanging a huge painting will make the foyer feel important.
- Showcase a beautiful piece of sculpture or bronze on a foyer table or display prominently on its own pedestal.
- The use of a center hall table or console provides an opportunity to decorate the surfaces of the tables, and redesigning the displays by changing the accessories seasonally, or when the mood strikes.
- Couple the foyer table with a chair and you can sit waiting for the school bus, to check the mail, or put your shoes on before leaving the home.
- Foyer benches come in all sorts of different styles, a French country painted bench with a rush seat and colorful cushion, or a high back Chinese black lacquer to a cottage style with storage under the seat.
- Select furniture to use in the foyer that you may not normally consider and that is useful, such as a chest of drawers, or buffet that provides a place for hats, scarves, and gloves. A sofa table with drawers can hold your blackberry, keys and mail without becoming cluttered.
- Hang a decorative mirror in the entrance to show off attractive features on the wall or in the room opposite. A mirror visually expands a narrow space and you can check your reflection before leaving the house.
- Display a bit of nature to bring in the outdoors or display lemons in a porcelain bowl.
- And last (but not least) select something whimsical and amusing that really shows off your personality for a warm and inviting foyer.
By:Barbara Mabey
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