How to Decorate a Small Entryway

A huge thanks to Behr for sponsoring this post! My favorable opinion of beautiful, high-quality paint is 100% my own. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Wanna know a little secret? Our entryway has pretty much been sitting empty since we renovated the kitchen. Oops. Even though the two spaces are connected, so much of our time and effort was put into the kitchen itself that we kind of just forgot about the poor little entry… until now, that is! Before we started the big reno, it looked like this…

…and I liked it. It was bright and cheery and functional, but when I discovered that the entry desk would make the perfect kitchen sideboard, the entry lost its main piece of furniture, and so it just sat there, empty.

To be honest, I was kind of confused about what to do with the space. We tore out the weird half wall that you see in the photo above {because it was ugly 🙂 }, so the entry literally flows right into the kitchen. I needed a way to give it a separate entry feel while still allowing the two spaces to work together well. After much deliberating, looking for inspiration on Pinterest, and shopping ’til I dropped, {Man, it’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it! 😉 } I finally put together a little space that I’m loving… at least for now.

As with most projects around here, it all started with paint. 🙂

We chose Behr Marquee Curio MQ3-22 for both the kitchen and the entry, which is a gray with a very slight green-ish tint to it. We left the door the same color we painted it last summer because I still love it SO much! (It is called Behr Marquee Compass Blue MQ5-54.)

After we had the paint colors down, it was time to figure out how to fill the space. Since the kitchen sideboard was going to be right beside it (you can see it peeking out of the photo above), I didn’t feel like I could put any sort of entry desk or table there because their shapes would be too similar. I ended up finding a little bench instead that fit perfectly in the space!

I snagged the shelf with hooks for 50% off at Hobby Lobby (score!), and everything else was in my stash, just begging to be put to good use. I love it when that happens! 🙂

Both pillows are from Target. The blue one is old, but the gold one is new-ish! I bought it thinking ahead to my Christmas decor and it just so happened to work perfectly in this space in the meantime! {Really I just look for any excuse to buy another pillow. It has gotten to the point where Connor– age 6– tattles on me to Donnie any time I buy one because they can’t believe I could ever need any more. Whoops! 🙂 }

This space may be small, but I love that some simple pieces were able to bring in a lot of function. The bench is the perfect place to sit to slip shoes on and off, and the hooks create a nice little drop zone while helping to maintain some semblance of order. 🙂

We had a few other projects happening in this space during the kitchen reno…

This is the view from the kitchen, and you can see our newly organized pantry straight ahead. The door on the right leads to our powder room, which also received a little refresh in the midst of the kitchen renovation. The little “Welcome” sign I made recently also landed in this space!

I think what I love most about the new entry is that the base pieces ended up being pretty neutral, which will make it oh-so-easy to change things up according to season or just whenever I get the urge {which, let’s be honest, is more often than I like to admit… 😉 }. I’m already thinking up plans for Christmas decor!

It’s hard to believe how much our house has changed in the last year– craziness! It’s fun to be able to look back and see the progress, though, and I’m looking forward to tackling even more spaces in the year ahead.

How do you decorate your entryway? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

A huge thanks to Behr for sponsoring this post! My favorable opinion of beautiful, high-quality paint is 100% my own. For more information, see my disclosures here.