The Ultimate Guide to Designing an Unforgettable Entryway
This first moment sets the tone for the entire home by introducing personality and taste
In The Decoration of Houses, Edith Wharton and architect Ogden Codman Jr. declare that an entryway should establish a home’s tenor and tone through graceful proportions and smooth transitions. More than a century later, their advice still resonates. Whether grand or understated, today’s most memorable entrances introduce their occupants as much as the architecture.
Ten Plus Three embraced that philosophy in an Austin, Texas, house for author Lorena Junco Margain, whose art holdings include works by Yayoi Kusama, George Condo, and Vik Muniz. As a longtime friend of the client—they once owned a gallery together in Monterrey, Mexico—studio founder Gonzalo Bueno knew her taste well. “She really wanted the house to feel like her, so when you walked in, you understood you were in the space of an art lover,” he says.
The architects had already conceived the brick-clad area’s curved walls and oculus when Margain acquired a metallic Kusama pumpkin. Bueno instinctively knew it belonged beneath the skylight. Visitors round a sinuous corridor before the double-height foyer dramatically opens to reveal the gleaming sculpture. “It communicates that this is someone passionate about art and unique spaces,” Bueno says. His advice? Make the first impression unmistakably personal.
Warm Welcome
Without the luxury of grand proportions, some entryways demand more subtle maneuvers. When architect Gil Schafer built a cedar-shingled vacation home in Southampton, New York, to resemble the area’s abundance of colonial-style cottages, he and interior designer Rita Konig wanted the house “to have two architectural characters: one formal, one informal,” he explains. The entry hall’s Federal-style moldings and classic wainscoting establish the former; Konig wittily subverted them with pineapple-leaf-topped lanterns and grasscloth wallpaper printed with hula dancers.
More than a visual foil, the hall also coaxes guests inward and beyond with a sweeping view of the grounds by landscape architect Edmund Hollander, who organized a swimming pool, dining terrace, and lush plantings around a 150-year-old copper beech tree. “This is a house for fun and relaxation when the family is together and at play,” says Konig, who believes transitional rooms invite adventurous decorating. “Hallways are spaces you move through rather than spend time in, so I’d encourage putting patterns on the walls, which always warms them up.”
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First Glance
Sometimes, homes reveal themselves from afar. Suzanne Tucker encountered that scenario when furnishing a contemporary hilltop residence in Bel Air, California, whose glass-clad entry becomes visible as one ascends the driveway. Recognizing she couldn’t manufacture surprise through concealment, the interior designer instead conjured intrigue by composing the entryway around a blazing-red painting by Hung Liu. As guests approach, the canvas announces the home’s confidence, centuries-spanning art collection, and willingness to embrace the unexpected. “Thinking about how that arrival would speak was very important,” Tucker explains.
Yet it intentionally doesn’t divulge everything. “Entries need to communicate what you’ll see beyond,” Tucker continues. “That’s the seduction of a house. Start that conversation at the front door.” Rather than overtly mirroring the lush gardens, she tempered the home’s crisp minimalism with rock crystal lamps, a black olive tree, and a turquoise-splashed antique rug that echoes the reflecting pond outside. Those gestures offer hints of what lies ahead without giving away the ending. The residence keeps its finest views just out of sight, revealing its remarkable collection and enfiladed interiors one room at a time.
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Ascending Order
Every great house needs a center of gravity. In a soigné West Palm Beach, Florida, residence orchestrated by Smith and Moore Architects and designer Caroline Rafferty, visitors discover it right away. Just beyond an oak-clad vestibule, a luminous plaster stair sweeps through a skylighted atrium devised as an interior courtyard. It elicits a showstopping moment for Rafferty’s clients, who are also her aunt and uncle, an Egyptologist and a Broadway producer, respectively, with a remarkable trove of ancient artifacts. “Whenever I decorate for them, it’s a dialogue between their love of modern architecture, contemporary art, and a reverence for the craftsmanship of these antiquities,” she explains.
Such an extraordinary collection demands gallery-like restraint. Instead of packing the atrium with treasures, Rafferty and architect Daniel Kahan edited the display so architecture and art amplify one another. Sculptures by Emily Young and Olga Sobko punctuate the stair’s base, while a lustrous ceramic wall piece by Brie Ruais crowns the ascent. Together, they offer a measured introduction to a home that proudly showcases works by Yves Klein, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Mohamed Melehi. “When you edit,” Kahan muses, “you end up with something that says what it needs to say pretty strongly without shouting.” The finest entryways know exactly what to disclose and what to hold back.
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A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2026 Late Fall Issue under the headline “Opening Act.” Subscribe to the magazine.