Furniture
The entryway is the room a household passes through most and furnishes last. It absorbs the coats, the boots, the parcels and the keys, and in most Canadian homes it does all of that with a single hook screwed into the drywall beside the door.
It is also the one room where the furniture has to work in the first ten seconds of arriving home, arms full, in wet weather. Danish and Swedish makers have been designing for that arrival for decades: a place to hang, a place to sit, a place for shoes, a mirror, and something to drop the small things into.
Tap a dot to open the piece. Five Muuto pieces in one corner of a plywood-lined hall.
Somewhere to Hang
A wall rack uses the one surface nothing else in the room can, which is why it comes first. Muuto's Coil Coat Rack is a single length of anodized aluminum, its profile taken from the curled-up form of rolled paper, with hooks that slide along it. More hooks can be added later, which matters in a household that grows.
It comes in two lengths, 23.6" and 39.3", both only 2.5" deep. Depth is the number to watch on the wall you squeeze past. Much beyond 3" there and a shoulder will find it, which is why the hanging usually belongs on the pass-by wall and everything bulkier opposite.
Form & Refine's Echo Coat Rack 88 is solid FSC-certified European oak, 34.6" wide and 2.8" deep. Jonas Herman of Herman Studio describes the thinking plainly: "We wanted to make a coat rack where repetition becomes an essential element of the expression. By repeating the same hook many times and putting them in a row, a graphically beautiful rhythm is created." The hooks have rounded tips, which is what stops a wool coat collar from creasing over a season.
Where a full rack is more than the wall needs, individual hooks do the work. Muuto's Dots can be set up a wall at whatever heights a family needs, and the flatter Attach hooks fold back against the wall when nothing is on them. The Dots began as a mobile, a history we set out in The Coat Hook That Started as a Mobile, and our guide to coat hooks and wall hooks covers the wall-mounted options in full.
Afteroom, from a Single Hook to a Full Stand
Afteroom Studio was founded in Stockholm by Hung-Ming Chen and Chen-Yen Wei, and their work for Audo Copenhagen returns to Bauhaus and Modernism every time. The Afteroom Coat Hanger is the clearest statement of it: circular dots in cast zinc alloy on a slim bar, powder-coated, with every screw hidden behind the fixture.
One detail decides where it can go. The bar mounts horizontally or vertically, so it can run along a hallway at coat height or turn on its end beside a door where there is only a narrow strip of wall to work with. Three widths cover most of those situations, and a fourth piece takes the same idea onto the floor.
The Large runs 31" and takes a family's worth of coats along a single wall. The Medium sets one bigger dot among smaller ones, which gives a short run some rhythm, and comes in black, white, or black with brass-plated knobs. The Small is 7.3" wide and 2.9" high, the piece for the strip of wall behind a door or the side of a cabinet, in black or black and brass.
Where there is no wall at all, or the wall is glass, the Afteroom Coat Stand carries the same language onto the floor. Two poles rise from a powder-coated steel base to 68.9", carrying eight hooks on a footprint of 12" by 8.8". The hooks are spaced deliberately, so a wet coat is not pressed against the one beside it, and the whole thing is cast zinc alloy and welded steel with nothing decorative anywhere on it.
Somewhere to Sit
Pulling boots off standing up is the small daily indignity that a bench solves. Form & Refine's A Line Storage Bench 111 runs 43.7"W x 13.8"D x 17.7"H and hides two separate compartments under a lid that lifts on a natural bend leather strap and is held open by the construction itself.
The legs are the detail worth noticing. As Herman Studio put it, "the lower cut of the two legs angles the piece so as to give it a feeling of being lifted up." A bench this deep could easily read as a box against the wall; the angle is what keeps it from doing so.
Where storage is not the problem, a bench can simply be beautiful. Artek's Bench 153A was designed by Alvar Aalto in 1945, a late addition to the L-leg family, and its legs mount directly to the seat, without the connecting elements such a joint usually needs. At 44.5"L x 15.75"D and 17.5" high in solid Finnish birch, it is light enough to move with one hand when the hallway needs to be clear.
Somewhere for Shoes
In a country with four distinct footwear seasons, shoe storage is the piece most often skipped. The A Line Shoe Rack 72 holds three pairs per row and twelve in total, in solid oak, at 28.3"W x 9.8"D x 39.4"H. Its top is deliberately larger than the shelves below, so the piece doubles as the console where keys and post land.
For a bigger household, or a mudroom that has to absorb sports gear, Muuto's Stacked Storage System scales to the problem. Modules in oak veneer or lacquered MDF can be arranged open or fitted with doors, stacked into a wall of cubbies or run low as a bench-height sideboard, and remounted when the family changes shape. The configuration that works hardest in an entry puts open cubes at the bottom for boots and closed doors at eye level.
Somewhere to Check Yourself
A mirror by the door does two jobs at once: the last look before leaving, and the light it throws back into a room that usually has no window. Muuto's Arced Mirror comes in 31.5" x 21.65" and 66.9" x 24", its FSC-certified spruce frame set back slightly from the glass so the whole thing reads like a small window. It comes in five finishes, from the natural Spruce through Light Lilac to Midnight Blue.
The A Line Mirror does the same standing on the floor, 76.8" tall on a 20.5" width and only 1.6" deep. Leaned against the wall at the end of a corridor it doubles the apparent length of the hall, and it needs no fixing into plaster or tile.
Somewhere for the Small Things
Every entryway generates a category of object that belongs nowhere: mittens, dog leads, reusable bags, the single boot whose partner has gone missing. Muuto's Restore Basket uses PET fibres made from 100% recycled plastic, measures 13.7"W x 19"L x 9"H, and comes in twelve colours, enough to either disappear into a wall or deliberately break it up.
Underfoot, the Ply Rug in recycled polyester is the practical choice for the wettest spot in a Canadian house: moisture-resistant, made for indoor and outdoor use, and offered in four sizes from 55" x 33" up to 118" x 79". In an entryway, the rug that gets lifted and shaken out every few weeks is the one still there in five years.
Frequently Asked Questions
What furniture does an entryway actually need?
Five jobs, in order of how often they come up: somewhere to hang coats, somewhere to sit to remove shoes, somewhere to put those shoes, a mirror, and a container for small items. A narrow hall can combine several of them, using a shoe rack with a solid top as the console and leaning the mirror against the wall.
How deep can entryway furniture be in a narrow hallway?
Keep furniture on one wall, measure the hall, and subtract a clear walking width of about 36". In a 48" hallway that leaves 12" of depth, which suits a wall rack at 2.5" to 2.8", a shoe rack at 9.8" or a storage bench at 13.8" if the hall is a little wider. Depth matters more than width in an entry.
How high should a coat rack be mounted?
High enough that the longest coat in the house hangs clear of the floor, which usually puts the hooks between 60" and 68" from the ground. If children use the same wall, add a second rack or a few individual hooks lower down, and keep the first at full height.
What is the best entryway storage for a Canadian winter?
Closed storage for what should stay dry and open storage for what needs to. A modular system lets you put open cubes at the bottom for wet boots and doors at eye level for hats and gloves. Pair it with a moisture-resistant rug that can be lifted and shaken out.
An entryway rewards planning more than almost any room in the house, because the pieces are few and each one is used several times a day. Measure the hall, settle the depth first, and choose the wall rack before anything else. If shelving is the larger problem, our guide to modular shelving systems covers the storage that runs deeper into the house.
If you are working out a configuration for a particular hallway, our design studio does this every week.
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