Entryway Makeover 2024 | DIY Entryway Decorating Ideas – One Room Challenge Week 1

If you’re looking for ideas to jazz up your entryway, these DIY entryway makeover ideas are sure to inspire! The entryway is the gateway to your home and first space to offer a welcome guests. Yet, it can be easily neglected. Think: piles of shoes by the door, bland walls, Amazon boxes waiting to be returned… Oh wait, I just described my entryway! And that’s exactly why it’s the room I’m tackling for the Spring 2024 One Room Challenge (ORC)! Read on for inspiration to create a beautiful, welcoming entryway and my plan to take my entryway from boring and unorganized to warm and inviting.

Photo: Chris Benz

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How to Create an Inviting Entryway in 2024

1. Add Color to Make Your Entryway Feel Warm and Inviting

As the entrance to your home and often a passageway between spaces, the entryway isn’t always a space you think to add color. Yet, here in 2024, color is everywhere! I am a neutrals gal through and through, so, even though I’ve loved seeing color in others home, I haven’t known if (or where) I would like to add color in my own home. It turns out, the entryway is a great place to start! It’s a smaller room, so adding color doesn’t feel so daunting (it’s also not as difficult to repaint if you decide you chose the wrong color). On a very related note, I was just introduced to these viral paintbrushes by a fellow DIY friend, and I am SHOCKED – absolutely no hand cramping! If you haven’t tried them, you definitely need to, they are as good as everyone says!

Photo: Margaret Wright

For our entryway makeover, I picked out a pretty sage green. The color is Svelte Sage by Sherwin Williams. I’ll admit, it took me a bit to commit to the green (my original plan was to just paint the front door green). But the more I looked at my sad, boring white walls, the more I knew I wanted to go all in and color drench the entire entryway in green. Which leads to my next point…

2. Go All In with Wall Paneling, Moulding, and Trim

As a smaller space, entryways offer the perfect canvas to take a design over the top. Because it’s smaller, you can go overboard without it feeling overwhelming. I like to think of small spaces more like art than an entire room. They can have a big impact without being overly in your face. One way to add big impact for a small budget involves adding trim and moulding to the walls. There are so many options when it comes to mouldings, from crown molding and chair rail, to wall paneling such as beadboard or shiplap, to box moulding, board and batten, a slat wall, or even custom designs. And each of those can range from a simple profile to complex, all bringing a unique vibe to your space.

Photo: Park & Oak

The photo above is what inspired me to add moulding to the walls and paint it ALL sage green! For our entryway makeover, I plan to add crown moulding (in a profile that matches the rest of the house) as well as a simple box moulding to add much needed texture to the walls. This will help make our entryway feel more cozy and inviting, as well as elevate it by focusing on the impactful details.

3. Textiles to Cozy Up Your Entryway

One of the simplest, yet highly impactful ways to create an inviting entryway is to consider the use of textiles in your space. Textiles may not be the first thing you think about for your entryway, but they can be very important to create an inviting space. Think about the color, texture, and materials of your window treatments (roman shades are a beautiful option), rugs, seating (such as a chair or bench), and maybe even a pillow. When considering textiles in an entryway, you should consider both the functionality of the item as well as how it contributes to the overall design of your space.

Photo: Ruard Veltman

A few things I’m considering as we makeover our entryway:

• Window Treatments – We mostly use them to block out the afternoon sun on hot summer days. I am thinking something lined may help block the heat than a sheer shade. I’m leaning toward Roman Shades or something similar.
• Rugs – This is a high traffic area in our home, as well as one that has to hold up to wet/dirty shoes, so I will need a rug that is durable as well as beautiful. I am currently obsessed with wool rugs, and specifically have my eye on this beautiful rug for our entryway!

4. Brighten Up Your Entryway with Lighting

I feel like entryways are either really bright or really dark, but either way, they always benefit from intentional lighting. Our current entryway lighting consists of just two recessed lights. They’re not bad by any means, but they look like two spot lights when on at night. For our entryway makeover, I found two vintage lights that I want to install by using this recessed light conversion kit. By removing the recessed lights, I hope to also remove the spotlight feeling. In addition, I plan to add a small lamp to our entry table for some ambient lighting. These little details will go a long way in my final design to create a cozy and inviting entryway.

Photo: Hartley Home

5. A Place for Everything

Think about walking into someone’s home and you look around and wonder where you should put your coat, shoes, and purse. One of my rules for my home is that everything needs to have a home (a place to be put away so we can minimize clutter). The entryway is one of the biggest culprits, often splattered with shoes, jackets, keys, piles of mail and packages. I’ve found that having a storage console in the entryway works wonders for having a place to hide certain things. There are many shoe storage options, as well as cute mail organizers, storage benches, and wall hooks to help keep things organized.

For our entryway, shoes are the number one culprit. Actually, this is the number one culprit for us by every doorway (to the point I’m wondering why we have so many pairs of shoes!). I have yet to find the right solution for our space, but I’m hoping this creative community can spur some ideas for me.

Photo: Arent & Pyke

Spring 2024 Entryway Makeover Plan – One Room Challenge

I can hardly  believe this is my 5th One Room Challenge! This challenge is actually how I discovered my love for DIY as well as the fun, encouraging online community within the DIY space. If you’ve been following along on Instagram, then you know I’m very antsy to liven up our stale and sterile white entryway!

My goal is to bring the outside in by using natural materials, colors and textures, and lots of plants. I am painting all walls and trim a pretty sage green and will add moulding to give the walls more texture; I will be installing both crown moulding and box moulding to really amp it up! I am still debating what to do with the floors, but I definitely need to do something! I’m considering either re-tiling the entire entryway myself or experimenting with micro cement to *hopefully* speed up the progress and still get a result I love! I have some cool vintage lights I will revamp and install in place of the recessed lights, and I may refinish my current entry console and bench (time allowing!). Then all that’s left are all the important details that will tie it all together – like a new rug, wall hooks, and choice planter pots.

I can’t wait to share our entryway transformation over the next 8 weeks! Be sure to check out the other incredible projects on the One Room Challenge Blog.

Entryway Makeover To-Do List:

• Install a New Door
• Paint Walls & Trim
• Add Wall Molding & Crown
• Decide what to do with Doorways
• Decide what to do with Floors
• Refinish Doorknob
• Upcycle Vintage Ceiling Lights
• Install new Shades
• Install new Hooks
• Buy new Rug
• Refinish Bench
• Refinish Console Table?
• Decorate!