Designing an Entrance Hall: Arrive Calmly Every Single Day

What the entrance hall has to do

The entrance hall is the most heavily used transition in a home. Everyone who comes in passes through it, usually with full hands. Yet in many renovations it is planned last, and often with whatever budget is left.

Hardly any room does so many jobs in so little space. A hallway generally has to be able to do the following:

• take jackets and coats, changing with the seasons and for guests
• store shoes, separated into those worn daily and those worn rarely
• hold bags, rucksacks and sports bags temporarily
• gather keys, wallet, headphones and post in one fixed place
• charge phones and small devices without cables lying around
• house umbrellas, helmets, a dog lead or a pushchair
• allow a glance in the mirror before you head out
• and receive guests in a way that makes them feel welcome

Take this list seriously and it becomes clear why a board of hooks is not enough. For the K. family we went through the list together and counted: four people, around twelve jackets in winter, over 25 pairs of shoes in use, six bags, two scooters. That is an average family, not a special case.

Order does not come from discipline, but from a place that is closer than the floor.

Leaving it as it is has its own cost. You lose a few minutes every morning, you start the day slightly annoyed, and every guest sees the clutter before they see you. A hallway improvised in a hurry then stays that way for years. So how do you think about a space that small?

Thinking of arrival as a transition

The entrance hall is the transition between city and home. It separates the stairwell, the noise and the weather from the private space. How we view transitions in general is explained in the article Designing room transitions. At the entrance the same principle applies with particular clarity: the threshold determines how everything behind it feels.

It helps to think of the hallway in three zones, even if it measures only a few square metres.

The drop zone directly at the door. This is where whatever has to leave your hands immediately lands: keys, post, shopping bag. A shelf at about 90 to 100 centimetres high, a bowl or compartment with a charging socket and a hook for the bag are often enough.

The changing zone a little further in. Here you sit down, take off your shoes, hang up your jacket. A bench about 45 to 48 centimetres high with shoe compartments underneath is the most important piece of furniture in the whole hallway.

The transition zone to the flat itself. Here you have arrived. A picture, a window, an accent of light, a view into the living space. This zone needs not storage but calm.

In the K. family's flat the corridor was about seven metres long and 1.40 metres wide. The three zones could be arranged one behind the other: a shelf right by the flat door, bench and cloakroom over the next two and a half metres, and behind them a free stretch with a niche that now holds a small picture and a wall light. Imagine coming home on a November evening: the wall light glows at the end of the corridor, your bag finds its hook, and the flat opens up before you. What do the fitted pieces need to look like to make that work?

A bespoke cloakroom: depths, heights, interior fittings

In a hallway, a bespoke cloakroom has one decisive advantage over ready-made furniture: it uses every centimetre between floor, ceiling and walls. In a Viennese Altbau with ceiling heights of 3 metres and more, that is especially valuable. Rarely used things go at the top, daily ones at the bottom.

Depth is the most important dimension, because it comes straight off the corridor. The table below shows typical guide values that we start with when planning.

With a corridor 1.40 metres wide, a cloakroom 40 centimetres deep still leaves 1 metre to walk through. That is enough for two adults to pass each other. With a cabinet 60 centimetres deep the corridor would have shrunk to 80 centimetres and felt cramped.

The interior fittings decide how it works day to day. The following have proved their worth:

1. Open hooks or a short rail at children's height, so that children can hang up their own jackets.
2. A ventilated compartment for wet shoes and jackets, with ventilation slots or a back panel set away from the wall.
3. Drawers with dividers for hats, gloves and scarves, labelled or separated by person.
4. A tall compartment for seasonal items, swapped twice a year.
5. A compartment with an integrated socket for chargers, headphones and batteries.

Our joinery workshop, Tischlerkultur, builds these cabinets itself. It carries on a Viennese carpentry tradition that began in 1935, so each piece is made to the millimetre for your corridor. You can see how on our page about fitted wardrobes. The general trade-off between bespoke and modular furniture is described in the article Bespoke fitted wardrobe or modular system. And what belongs in the hallway at all?

Storage in the context of the whole flat

The hallway is not the only place for things needed on the way in and out. It often makes more sense to put part of the storage elsewhere. Winter coats, ski boots and suitcases do not need space at the door. They can live in a store cupboard, a cellar compartment or a tall wardrobe in the sleeping area.

That is why we never plan the entrance hall in isolation, but as part of a storage concept for the whole flat. The question is: what has to be at the door, and what can live two rooms away? In the K. family's flat the winter sports gear and the guest jackets moved into a new cupboard at the end of the corridor. Only what is used daily stayed at the door. The cloakroom became smaller and yet tidier.

A common mistake is to build in as much as possible in the hallway. A corridor lined with cupboards on both left and right feels like a tunnel. Better is one side with closed fronts and one side that stays free or gets only a slim shelf. Which light makes such a corridor feel inviting rather than narrow?

Light that welcomes

A hallway without a window is more the rule than the exception in a Viennese Altbau. The lighting therefore has to be planned completely. A single ceiling light in the middle of the corridor casts harsh shadows and leaves the ceiling dark.

A combination of three kinds of light works better. Indirect light that brightens the ceiling or a wall creates the basic brightness. Directional light above the shelf and at the mirror makes sure you can find your keys and see your face well. A small accent, such as a wall light or an illuminated picture at the end of the corridor, gives the route a destination. How light shapes such transitions you can read in the article Light as a transition.

A presence sensor that switches the light on at a dimmed level when you walk down the corridor at night is practical. When you come home in the evening, a switch right next to the door should activate the basic lighting, so you do not have to feel around in the dark. We fix early where sockets, switches and charging points go. Why that matters so much is explained in the piece on electrical planning before buying furniture.

Coming home, the first light decides whether you arrive or merely enter.

Material and floor: robust and yet warm

In the entrance hall, materials are put under more strain than anywhere else. Wet shoes, grit in winter, bags that scrape along the wall. At the same time the hallway is the first impression of the flat, and it should not look like a building entrance.

For the floor, one solution has proved its worth that has a tradition in the Viennese Altbau: a hard-wearing, easy-care surface directly at the door, such as natural stone, terrazzo or porcelain stoneware, and then the flat's own floor. The transition can be designed as a deliberately placed area, as a rug set into the floor or as a recessed entrance mat. We give an overview of surfaces in the comparison of parquet, stone, ceramic and terrazzo.

For the cloakroom fronts we recommend surfaces that forgive being touched. Oak or walnut veneer is more robust than many people think, and scratches can often be repaired. High-gloss lacquer shows every mark. At the bottom, where shoes and bags knock against it, a plinth in a harder material can make sense. Which surfaces keep looking good in the long run is covered in our article on easy-care surfaces.

What matters is that the hallway sets the tone for the whole flat. If oak and a warm white dominate the living space, the hallway should pick up that language. A separate material theme for the entrance quickly looks like a different house. How a continuous material concept comes about is explained in the piece on the common thread through all rooms. Does every kind of home need the same answer, though?

Special situations: Altbau, new build, family house

Not every entrance is a long Altbau corridor. The emphasis shifts depending on the type of home.

In the Viennese Altbau hallways are often generous in height but narrow and long. Slim cloakrooms, floor-to-ceiling cupboards with top boxes and clear lighting help here. Old panelled doors, stucco and parquet should stay wherever possible. What else to bear in mind with an Altbau you can read in the article on Altbau renovation with an overall concept.

In a new build the hallway is often a small lobby that opens directly into the living space. There is frequently no wall at all for a cloakroom. One solution is a freestanding piece of furniture that serves as a cloakroom on one side and a shelf unit or sideboard on the other.

In a detached family house in Lower Austria there is often a second entrance as well, for example from the garage or the garden. This side entrance often becomes the real family entrance. Wellington boots, sports kit and the dog lead belong there, while the main entrance can stay calm for guests. In every case you deal with one contact person, from the first sketch to the handover.