The foyer in your home can say a lot about you. A bright color on the walls can tell visitors you’re playful; a gorgeous chandelier can hint at formality. Or, if your foyer is cluttered with shoes, mail and miscellaneous decor items, it can say, as many do, “I haven’t had time to deal with this space.”

Scottsdale interior designer Carl Hight says one challenge many East Valley homeowners face is dealing with the space just across the threshold of their front door.

“In so many of the houses here, there’s really not much of an entryway,” he says. “You walk in and, boom, you’re inside.”

He says many clients think they need to fill the space with a lot of furnishings or leave it empty, but that there is a balance of something between those two extremes.

One thing is certain, he says. “Less can be better.”

Take, for example, the Scottsdale home of Barbara Paton.

“She thought, like a lot of people think, that you have to put stuff there,” Garcia says about his client’s home entryway before it was redesigned.

“Barbara is a very stylish lady — sophisticated and tasteful,” says Hight. “I wanted to make her home not only a reflection of her persona but also a showcase for some of her life history with memories for sharing.”

Paton’s Inuit sculpture and paintings were the catalyst for the project.

“They stood out among the clutter of her house and spoke most directly about Barbara’s personal history and her love for tribal art,” says Hight.

He cleared out everything from the small tiled entry that separates a flight of stairs leading to the second floor and another flight leading down into the main living space. He had neutral tile installed to replace a pink, dated floor tile, painted the walls a neutral light tan and hung a couple of carefully chosen art pieces on the walls. He then replaced old lighting fixtures with a trio of George Nelson cigar lamps, which gave the room a more modern feel and drew the eye to the towering ceilings. Beyond that, he left the entry empty, allowing visitors to look past the first few feet of the home into the long living room below, which he completely redesigned.

“What I wanted to create was a place that was clean, crisp and aesthetically pleasing,” he says. “We cleared the decks and were able to achieve a more contemporary look that is still functional and showcases what is important to her.”

The Paton home was an example of how even the smallest entries can be big on style, but even in large homes in the East Valley the foyer is often overlooked.

Many of these entryways are transitional spaces between the outdoors and in, says Phoenix designer Ernesto Garcia.

“The challenge is, how to define the space as it’s own space and give it a correlation to what’s behind the entry,” says Garcia.

At a house on 74th Place in Scottsdale, Garcia used an inset medallion on the floor and an Italian lantern centered above it to separate the entrance from the living room.

“It defined the space without interrupting the flow,” he says. The architect built the home so that the backyard and pool behind the house are visible the minute you open the front door, and Garcia did not want to disrupt that view with furnishings.

Garcia says there are two schools of thought when it comes t o designing a great entryway.

The entrance can hint at what’s to come or to do something diifferent, and maybe even a little adventurous, to create the “wow factor” for visitors. In the hous e on 74th Place, he used eclectic furnishings as clues to what was in the rest of the house. In ot hers, he has used the space as a chance to do something different from the rest of the home.

“Some people, especially in more contemporary homes, are interested in surprise,” he says. “Sometimes youu have to walk around a wall to get to a living room or hallway. Then, the foyer can be treated as an independent feature with an element of surprise or drama.

“That doesn’t mean going off the deep end, just something playful,” he says, such as a dramatic textured wall treatment or a niche with one dynamic pie ce of art.

One sure way to add drama to an entryway is with mirrors, and Garcia says he uses them a lot when designing foyers.

“I’ll mirror the entire wall,” he says. “It duplicates the space, but at the same time, it does not make it too obvious. I’ll hang artwork right over the mirror. The first thing people see is themselves, it brings the space back to you. Then you start to see the art, the console, the chair.”

Furnishings are important, even in small spaces, but scalee is key, and he agrees with Hight that less can be more in small spaces.

Even though many entryways have been downsized over the years, Garcia says he thinks the most important function is to provide a place to land when you return home.

“I do,” he says. “The first thing I do when I get home is put my keys down, take my shoes off.”

Resources
Carl Hight
(602) 750-8444

Ernesto Garcia
3150 E. Beardsley Road, Suite 1048
Phoenix
(602) 317-3205

source : www.eastvalleytribune.com