In this snack-sized episode of Home: The Second Story, we dive into one of the most deceptively complex design topics: the entryway. Sheri, Taylor, and Marilyn explore how the front entry is far more than just a threshold—it’s a critical transition space that balances function, privacy, beauty, and identity.
We each bring regional and architectural perspectives to the conversation. From Marilyn’s tight urban renovations in Boston, where front yards are rare and entries often lead directly into the living space, to Sheri’s multi-acre ground-up projects in Cincinnati, and Taylor’s context in Birmingham where front doors are increasingly being reshaped by delivery logistics, each of us sees the entry through a different lens. One universal takeaway? The entry sets the tone, not just for guests, but for homeowners who interact with it every day.
We talk about the evolving role of entries due to lifestyle shifts, especially post-pandemic. Deliveries, security, and family traffic have made the once-iconic front door sometimes secondary to mud rooms and garage entries. Yet the symbolic and aesthetic value of the front door remains strong—architecturally and emotionally. That duality poses fun design challenges. We find ourselves designing separate “family entries” to handle daily mess while preserving the formality and clarity of guest spaces.
From pivot doors the size of a garage wall, to small-space solutions for privacy and storage, we unpack the materials, zoning regulations, and even fire department restrictions that play into designing a successful entry. We debate wood versus steel doors, how glass can welcome light without sacrificing privacy, and why allowing for an overhang might save you more trouble than you think.
We also highlight the importance of planning for longevity—thinking not just about the kids’ muddy boots today, but also about tomorrow’s teenagers and future lifestyle shifts. And we wrap with an important tip: if a beautiful front door matters to you, make it a separate budget item—it’s not just another window.
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Voiceover (00:03):
Everyone says how horrible it'll be to renovate or build your house. We're here to say, it doesn't have to be that way.
Join three seasoned architects as they interview homeowners who recently completed a large project and ask them one simple question: what do you know now that you wish you knew before you started?
Welcome to Home: The Second Story Podcast.
Marilyn Moedinger (00:28):
Hi, and welcome to a snack sized episode of Home: The Second Story. I'm Marilyn Moedinger of Runcible Studios from Boston, Massachusetts and Lancaster, Pennsylvania and I'm joined today by …
Sheri Scott (00:41):
Sheri Scott from Springhouse Architects in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Taylor Davis (00:45):
And I'm Taylor Davis from TPD Architect in Birmingham, Alabama.
Marilyn Moedinger (00:50):
Alright, well, time to dive in. Today, we are talking about entries. So, the entry to the house, I think we're kind of focused on front entries, we could talk about back entries, we can talk about the exterior of the entry, we can talk about the front foyer, the back foyer, the hallways.
Sheri Scott (01:09):
Mud room.
Marilyn Moedinger (01:10):
Yeah, there's a lot here. We've talked about mud rooms a little bit in the past. We thought this would be a fun topic partially because this cover is very different, so we have different sort of perspectives on this.
So, as I'm often doing renovations, especially in tight urban conditions in Boston, that's a really different … I don't have a whole lot of control. I don't even have a front yard a lot of times. I'm just coming straight from the street into the house. So, how we handle entries is pretty different maybe than Sheri, especially who often is working on multi acre-
Sheri Scott (01:39):
Yeah, ground up stuff. Even if it's a smaller site, we still have … so, I would say from my perspective, we start with the car because that's how everyone comes to their house. And so, we do take time to consider what are you looking at when you're driving up, whether it's a short driveway.
For instance, if you're in a neighborhood, it's a short driveway, we try to go past the house, and then turn into the driveway, and I tell people, “You're spending so much money on this house, don't you want to look at it every day?”
Marilyn Moedinger (02:13):
Yeah, drive by it. That's great (chuckles).
Sheri Scott (02:15):
Exactly. Drive by it every day. When we have more space, we try to do something on axis with the front door. You drive up, and then swing around into a side load garage or something. And then after the car, the homeowner almost always is going to drive up, park in the garage, and then come into their home.
So, their front door is the mud room or garage door, but then we still have to account for guests and visitors, which everyone really is still focused on front doors, and I think that will be forever because that is the iconic image even if nobody uses their front door — I shouldn't say nobody uses a front door; it's used less often by the homeowner.
But then we do account for guests and pedestrians walking up to and what that experience is, walking up to the front door and waiting in the rain or greeting people on a porch or yeah. So, those are the site implications until we get to the entry.
Taylor Davis (03:28):
I think one of the ones that came up during the pandemic and my kid worked for Shipt, so he was doing grocery delivery during the pandemic.
So, deliveries are a big part of thinking about people at your front door now, and whether or not somebody's like- if they're going to leave stuff on a not covered porch or if they're going to leave stuff on a covered porch, and if you're only getting Amazon deliveries or if you're getting grocery deliveries or Target deliveries or whatever that is.
So, I think the pandemic really shifted a lot of people's mindsets about what our front doors were really for. And like I said, I had a kid who was making those grocery deliveries and he would have to sit in his car to make sure somebody would get the stuff off the front porch so it didn't get rained or snowed or whatever those things were for. So, I feel it very keenly the delivery system (laughs).
Marilyn Moedinger (04:24):
Well, there's also delivery security, which is a big deal. So, we're often designing whether it's boxes or special ways that packages can be kind of hidden or secured when they're delivered during the day and people aren't home or whatever the case may be, so that's a big deal as well.
Obviously, for us working in a more urban condition, we usually do not have garages. I often have clients who don't even have cars (laughs), or their cars are stored offsite or somewhere else. And so, most of those folks are using their front door as their front door.
And the challenge that comes there is you … because at first when you hear about okay, well, the homeowners are using the garage door to enter and that's kind of a bummer because they're not coming in their front door. But the advantage to that is that they're coming into a mud room. So, the sports equipment, the groceries, the mess is handled there before you sort of enter the house.
What we find in a lot of our renovations is when you're coming in the front door and that's the main entry for everybody, then where are the kid backpacks and the sports equipment and the snow boots because It's New England. Where do those go that aren't also the front door where your guests are coming in?
So, we are often trying to figure out a back door, that's not actually a back door, that we've started to call it a family entry, so that accommodates that. And we often don't have a lot of space or room to figure that out, but it's a really fun design problem to figure out how to keep the “specialness” of coming to someone's front door and you don't walk in and you're immediately surrounded by piles of homework and soccer cleats (laughs).
But I also think that the coming into the house and coming into that space, whatever it is, whether it's the mud room or whether it's a more formal space, it's important to have a moment of pause before you go into the rest of the house.
Taylor Davis (06:26):
I think lots of times we get calls for renovations where that's the thing that frustrates people the most about their existing house, especially like mid-centuries. It doesn't have to be like a mid-century modern, but even like a rancher or a cape, where that front door just opens into the living room or you're like smack dab onto a stair and everybody's like it's kind of a little much and there's no place for pause, there's no place for reflection.
And so, even if it's just cordoning off like a screen wall or something to feel like that's actually a place as opposed to just a door.
Sheri Scott (07:06):
I tell my clients we're starting from scratch, but sometimes we're tight on square footage because people want small homes more and more often. But I'd ask them to think about because this is what I think about: On a Saturday afternoon when you have nothing to do and you're laying on the couch, how are you going to feel if somebody comes to your door?
Especially if you're doing a lot of glass, which sometimes we do — do you want them to see you get up off the couch and come over? Like we want to have some privacy.
Taylor Davis (07:43):
And a moment (this sounds terrible), sometimes you might want to hide, you might not want to go get who's at the door.
Sheri Scott (07:51):
Lots of times, I don't answer my door.
Taylor Davis (07:54):
I don't necessarily want to answer the door for somebody who's selling encyclopedias.
Sheri Scott (07:59):
Uninvited.
Marilyn Moedinger (08:01):
Exactly. Well, let's talk about the actual physical door itself because I think this plays into it. So, I know a lot of folks kind of start off, at least my clients often will start off by saying, I want a lot of glass, I want light coming in and all this kind of stuff. But then the privacy question immediately comes up. So, how do you kind of balance that?
So, we've done doors that have strips of glass, like a sort of mid-century modern type thing that are frosted. So, it's letting the light in but not letting you see out. But also, it is important to have a way to see out your door for security reasons. So, that's where sidelights come in so you can kind of see out.
I've also had requests from clients with dogs that the side lights are great for the dog to sit at and look out the window and watch what's going on, but then some people say they don't want their dog doing that because it stresses their dog out. So, you got to find out which dog it is.
Sheri Scott (08:52):
Yeah. Case by case.
Taylor Davis (08:57):
We did a really pretty renovation with some clients who … it was actually their idea. They had had some existing shutters on the inside of their house. So, when we added steel and glass front doors, double doors and they were concerned about the privacy, we installed the shutters on the backside of the door, so they don't use the front door all the time.
And it was operable from you could make it sort of into a Dutch door situation where you could close the lower part and they were beautiful, and they were original to the house. And it was such an interesting solution to that problem that I would've never thought of that really sort of added a whole level of customization to the house, and I loved it. I thought it was so lovely.
Marilyn Moedinger (09:41):
Yeah, that's great. I think that's an important reminder that we can look at historic and vernacular architecture for inspiration. Not because we're trying to make something look old or look traditional, but because people have been solving these problems for millennia.
Sheri Scott (09:54):
Right. I love that.
Marilyn Moedinger (09:55):
People have been solving the problem of how do you get in and out of your private living space since we were living in caves and stretch something across the cave opening to keep animals out. So, I think solving that problem and seeing how different people do it through history and in different cultures is really cool, because the front door is very symbolic for everybody. In every culture there's different colors you might paint your door different ways, you might do certain things or different ways you approach a door.
Taylor Davis (10:24):
Alright, materials for doors. I want to hear what you all are doing.
Sheri Scott (10:28):
Can I tell you about one door that we're designing in my office right now because I'm so excited.
Marilyn Moedinger (10:34):
(Laughs) Let's hear it.
Sheri Scott (10:34):
Actually, we have a team of seven and we brought everybody together around the table this week to do a collaborative design on this door because we're all so excited. So, this door, it's a big house, and this front door is literally a double door, 10 feet wide by 14 feet tall.
Taylor Davis (10:55):
Oh, my God.
Sheri Scott (10:57):
It’s going to be a pivot door. So, each leaf is 5 feet by 14 feet. Structurally, it has to be a pivot so that we can do it. And I even sat down with the client and said, “In 10 years, your wife probably is not going to be able to open this door.” I was very explicit, and I made him choose that he was still going to do this door. And she was involved too. I didn't mean to make it sound like that, but anyway, we're super excited about that door.
So, that door is obviously custom made and it is going to be a wood product. It will probably have some kind of sandwich metal on the inside to keep the warping down. But other than these super exciting (laughs) custom creative doors, we usually do wood doors. People love a wood door, like-
Marilyn Moedinger (12:00):
We do wood door all the time.
Sheri Scott (12:00):
I think it feels like home for a wood door.
Marilyn Moedinger (12:03):
We're often doing mahogany front doors. And even if the rest of the windows, I mean we're certainly not doing mahogany windows (laughs) — mahogany doors are really cool, and they're actually really hard wearing, and I think people don't often think of that or they think they have to get a plastic door basically, which is what vinyl is, or a metal door or something like that.
But especially if it's undercover, we do them all the time, and we're in New England, it's cold, there's snow, there's all kinds of things, there's freeze, storms.
Sheri Scott (12:34):
It’s more of the sun that damages it than the weather.
Marilyn Moedinger (12:37):
It's the sun. That's what I was just going to say, it's more about the sun.
Taylor Davis (12:41):
We do lots of different doors. I would say right now around here, there's a huge trend for steel and glass doors that look like old hope section doors, like pretty big steel doors with lots of glass, they're gorgeous.
Sheri Scott (12:55):
For front doors?
Taylor Davis (12:56):
Yeah, for front doors. It's a big thing right now. And it's become a very notable, you can see it as kind of a design element all over our sort of area. And the nice thing is they are dimensionally stable, like maybe a thermal break, but they're not going to really warp if they're done, and they let in a lot of light.
Lots of people around here like French doors, like glass French doors, double French doors on the front of their house. So, a lot of times we'll do those in clad to match the windows. If we're doing clad windows, because that gives it a little stability and resistance to some of the elements.
One of the things we've learned recently is some of the wood door manufacturers won't warranty a door if it doesn't have an overhang of a certain depth. And so, if we're doing a kind of flat facade, we may have to really kind of figure out what the right door is. If they're not maintenance people, they may not want something that they have to reseal and stain constantly to maintain it, they may do better off with something else.
And there are some manufacturers that are dealing with that and that are making wood doors that don't have those requirements for overhangs in order to warranty them, so you can find them. And then we do custom wood ones too. I mean, those certainly come up all the time in whatever different species.
So, you see that really run the gamut around here, but I would say right now, like the kind of European looking steel and glass doors are all the rage.
Marilyn Moedinger (14:30):
That's fun.
Taylor Davis (14:31):
It's what everybody wants.
Marilyn Moedinger (14:33):
One of the things that's top of mind for a lot of my clients is security. And I'm sure I'm not the only one with that, with clients who are concerned with that. But certain locking systems don't work with certain kinds of doors. So, if you're using smart locks, they won't work with a patio style door or with a three-point lock, like a lot of patio style doors have a three-point lock or a sliding door, it won't work with that.
So, suddenly, you have someone who's like, “I want all these doors.” And then they're like, but it doesn't work with my smart home locking system. And so, there's ways around that and that kind of thing. But I think another thing is for an owner to ask themselves what kind of security am I looking for? A double door is a lot less secure than a single door. It's just a weaker and easier to kind of break in. So, that's something to think about.
But I also wanted to touch on something that you brought up Taylor about overhangs. I mean, I think overhangs, not only are they good to protect the door, but they're also really great, we kind of touched on this earlier about when you come up to the door and it's pouring rain, and you're fiddling with your keys and you've got groceries and there's a kid, and the houses I do that someone's also got a cargo bike and they're like wrestling with all this stuff, and they're in the pouring rain, like, just give an overhang.
Sheri Scott (15:54):
And there are a lot of ways to do that that don't overwhelm the design.
Taylor Davis (16:00):
But I will also say just because I've had this from experience — be careful when you're doing those and talk to your architect about any zoning. If you are up tight to the front yard line, your overhang might count as an encroachment, it's going to depend on the municipality. So, be thinking about that and plan for that.
Sheri Scott (16:24):
So, the other thing I want to say about front doors for our listeners is if the front door design is important to you, make sure that it becomes an allowance line item. That it doesn't just get lumped in with the window door line item. You want a front door line item for that.
Marilyn Moedinger (16:45):
And that's because they're more expensive. And if you want to do something custom, like a 14-foot (laughs) pivot hinge, that's not your “off the shelf.”
Sheri Scott (16:56):
We knew this client and we knew they wanted something dramatic, so we did it. We made sure that the contractor had a line item.
Taylor Davis (17:02):
It’s not just the door, it's the hardware and all the lock, like all the stuff is going to be pricier. So, yeah, Sheri's right, account for that.
Marilyn Moedinger (17:12):
I'm glad you brought up about zoning. I'm not trying to circle us back to that, but just to say that it's just a reminder that even something that seems simple can be a big deal (laughs) and can involve sort of bigger questions, whether it's the structure or whether it's getting into, if you're changing the door and you need to change where a light switch is and that leads to something else, lighting on entries is really important, and the lighting that leads you to the entry, landscape lighting, the entry lighting above your head sort of to light the space, but also you want to have your mail accessible, like to get your mail.
So, I'm working in a lot of homes where the mailbox is on the house, not at the street. So, you want to have that well-lit as well so you can see what you're up to, your doorbell, all that stuff has to be composed. Your address numbers, all that stuff is a part of your entry.
And by the way, address numbers are another thing that seems really easy, but the fire department or the building department will have something to say if you don't put them in the right spot. The fire department will say, “Move those.” Because the fire department has control over where you put your house numbers (laughs).
Sheri Scott (18:29):
Yeah, or you'll end up with double. Sometimes we do the regulatory numbers out at the street, and then do something different on the house.
Taylor Davis (18:40):
One quick thing that I want to (and Sheri kind of brought it up too) — and it's a question about how many people you're bringing into your entry. I think thinking about that too, if you entertain a lot, you want to think about how people are coming into your house, how lots of people are going to get into your house, where they're going to park, how wide is the path going to be?
Around here, when kids get their driver's licenses at 16, we got to make sure there's enough parking for however many bajillion cars are going to show up and that people aren't having to walk from parked on the street and there's a path that takes them there so that you've got all the teenagers coming in.
So, I think too, this circles back a little bit to what Sheri was saying, but your entry is going to get used by so many different people and putting all of those kind of user groups, it is you and it's most of the time you, but the time you're going to feel it a lot too is when it's not you and you haven't thought about that “not you” person yet.
Marilyn Moedinger (19:45):
It's also not just you today. So, there's a lot of things, like I'll be working with clients and we do Pinterest boards or whatever, and if they have little kids, they'll pin all the stuff that's related to having little kids; like stroller or little kid stuff, or like a little low bench so the kids can change their boots.
And I'm like, that's super cute and it looks really cute on Pinterest, but is that even going to be relevant in three years? Like your kids are going to be older and it's certainly not going to be relevant in 10 years. So, how do you design these spaces, whether it's entry, mud room, that kind of thing to grow with your family and to grow with your changing needs?
We're working with clients who are in their houses for a long period of time and they want those homes to work for them for a long period of time. So, you've got to think about not just what it is today, but also how your family's going to grow and evolve.
Taylor Davis (20:37):
You're going to go from having little boots to like eight sets of car keys in the front of your house and you got to figure out how to deal with that (laughs).
Marilyn Moedinger (20:43):
Thanks so much for joining us today on Home: The Second Story for our quick snack. Questions for us, topics you'd like us to cover or are you interested in being a guest, we'd love to have you. Reach out at admin@htsspodcast.com and see you next time.
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