When you get home, do you pay much attention to your home entrance? Many people just walk through the door and continue with their day without paying too much attention to the entry itself. If you enter the house through a side entrance or the garage, you probably pay even less attention to your entry. However, the holidays are rapidly approaching, which means your home entrance will be getting a lot more attention from family and friends visiting, which means that now is the time to upgrade it. If you need some ideas for upgrading your home entrance before the holiday season, read on; we have put together some of our favorite ideas for you.
Upgrade the Door
Your guests will be spending some time looking at your front door while waiting for you to let them in, so upgrading it is a great idea. You can get a new door or just repaint your existing door, but make it something that is enjoyable to look at. In addition to painting or replacing your front door, you can dress up the area for the holidays. You can add a festive doormat or hang a wreath on your front door. This is a fast and simple idea to check off your list that can be done before your holiday guests arrive.
Update Your Siding
Your home’s siding plays a crucial role in ensuring that it is protected from the elements, and it is how people judge your home’s curb appeal. Since the siding is exposed to the elements, over time, it can begin to show it. If your paint job is fading or cracked or showing other signs of wear and tear, it might be a good idea to upgrade it before the holidays. This is a bigger project than just your home entrance, but it can be worthwhile to improve your curb appeal and potentially increase your property value.
Photo by Timberlake Custom Homes
Depending on the weather in your area, this might not be doable right now, but it is a good idea to keep it in mind for next year. You can repaint your home siding or replace it, depending on what needs to be done with it. While updating your siding, you can hang up some festive lights to draw the eye.
Create a Radiator Sideboard
If your home has a radiator in the entrance, a fun idea to upgrade the radiator is to turn it into a sideboard. If your radiator is taking up valuable space in your home entrance, you can create a sideboard cover for it, allowing you to have a little sideboard table in your home entrance. You just need to build out a surround with little drawers in it and some sort of mesh screens to let the heat from the radiator come through.
Update Coat Storage
Do you have enough coat racks to accommodate everyone who is visiting at the same time? If not, things can get pretty tangled, so it is a good idea to update your coat racks before the holiday season. You can hang up more coat hooks or get a coat rack.
A lot of winter clothing items can fall off of most coat hangers or should not be hung up, so you will also need a place for those. You can hang some metal beverage tubs on the wall above your coat hooks, positioned on their side. You can drill holes in the bottom of the tubs to hang them on the walls above the coat hooks. If they do not currently go with your aesthetic, you can always paint the tubs before you hang them on the walls.
People also need a place to put their shoes, so consider adding a bench seat under the coat hooks where they can sit down and take off their shoes, then store them under the bench so they will not be in the way.
Install Faux Stone
If you want to add a touch of nature to your home entrance for the holiday season, there are a lot of ideas for upgrading it, where you can incorporate faux stone. You can use faux stone to surround your front door, add wainscoting around the porch, or even around the entire home exterior.
Inside your entrance, you can install a faux stone accent wall to make your home entrance stand out or even cover the walls in the entire entryway that will pop.
Photo by Satori Homes & Renovations
Plus, since faux stone is DIY-friendly, it is a great conversation starter for your guests, too, since you installed the entire thing yourself!
Use the Leaf Blower
You do not want your holiday guests to end up slipping on a bunch of leaves cluttering your home entrance walkway. So, before your guests arrive, a good way to update your entry is to bust out the leaf blower and get rid of those leaves. Plus, not having them in the walkway means your guests will not be tracking them inside and making a new mess.
Upgrade Your Lighting
While there is something special about looking at holiday lights strung on a home’s exterior, you also need lighting outside the rest of the year. So, in addition to hanging up some lights around your home entrance to make it more festive during the holiday season, consider changing your outdoor light fixtures. You can even find some cute holiday-themed light fixtures that you can change out when the season is over. If you want to get really creative with your exterior lighting, you can even get some smart lightbulbs that will let you change the colors based on the season.
Update Your Hardware
If you are looking for some little things that can have a bigger impact than you might think, updating your hardware is a great small project to make things pop. You can get a new doorknob, doorknocker, or doorbell and even update your house numbers. These are pretty small projects, but they can truly stand out and draw the eye.
About the Author
Auz Burger is a freelance writer and an expert in faux stone and brick veneer and home DIY projects. She has a BA from Washington State University and has been writing and editing professionally for over a decade.
