How The Stars Of HGTV's Unsellable Houses Make The Most Of A Small Entryway

We expect a lot out of our entryway. Given it's the first and last place we see when we come and go from our homes, it's only natural that we'd want this area to be welcoming and stylish. Since it's also a space that sees a large amount of traffic, we need it to be highly functional as well. But what if your entryway is small? This requires you to be really strategic with your decor and furniture choices to make efficient use of the space without cluttering it up too much. That's just what twin sisters Leslie Davis and Lyndsay Lamb did when they renovated a rambler house in Season 4, Episode 11 of their TV show "Unsellable Houses."

Their first order of business (seen via YouTube) was to recommend ditching the once-popular home feature known as a sunken living room. By leveling the floor and eliminating the step from the entryway, it created better flow from the front door into the rest of the home. As for decor, they kept it really simple with just a small round mirror on the wall and a white dresser placed adjacent to the entryway to offer storage for purses, keys, and other belongings. To dial up the style, they created an accent wall with wallpaper yet kept the color palette light and neutral to make the small entryway feel bigger. Want to copy their style? Read on to find similar pieces that would work well in entryways that are tight on space.

Choosing to wallpaper one of the entryway walls was a bold choice because a busy pattern or a dark color could have made the small space feel even more closed-in. But the twin TV hosts cleverly used a creamy wallpaper featuring a soft gray palm print, which gave the space an airy feel and definitely enhanced the "coastal casual" look they were going for. This wallpaper from Spoonflower has a similar vibe (starting at $39 per roll) as does this higher-end version by Seabrook Designs from Home Depot ($171 per roll). If a wallpaper project doesn't sound appealing to you, you could always use a stencil like this one by STENCILIT from Amazon ($39.90) to paint a palm print pattern onto your wall.

Mirrors are a key piece for any entryway, allowing you to check your appearance one last time on your way out the door. Davis and Lamb chose a round mirror with a whitewashed wood frame to bounce light around the small entryway and further evoke the light, airy feel of a beach house. This distressed wood mirror by ABBSR from Walmart ($70.99) is a fairly close match to theirs as is this mirror by FirsTime & Co. from Home Depot ($98.71). To add storage, the sisters installed a chic white dresser nearby, which is similar in style to the KOPPANG from IKEA ($129.99) or the narrower IKENO nightstand from Amazon ($149.97). The three drawers offer much-need storage space, and there's still plenty of room in the entryway to kick off your shoes.