Mudrooms – Your Home’s Reception Center
After and hour or so in traffic, you finally make it home from a long day of work. You have your purse, coat, briefcase, overcoat, car keys, and/or other items that you can’t wait to drop as soon as you enter your home. Is there a designated place in your home design for these items? How about a Mudroom? A mudroom is an area of the home designed for entering and leaving the house. In addition, it serves as a buffer between the outdoors and indoors. Mudrooms are high traffic areas used daily so they are designed to handle dirt, grime, wear & tear. When a designer design a garage layout, a mudroom is likely adjacent to that space.
The purpose of a mudroom
Mudroom house plans are in high demand and have been for sometime. A carefully designed mudroom acts as a place to drop off items use on a regular basis. Drop-off items include things like briefcases, coats, dirty work boots, kids back packs, sports equipment, etc. The ideal place for a mudroom is just off the garage next to the kitchen and laundry. Our Boxley house plan and Cashton home plan are good examples of this layout. A powder room or half bath near the mudroom is a plus and highly recommend where the design allows. The laundry and mudroom can also be incorporated together. Our LoJack house plan illustrates this example. However, make each room separate when possible.
Mudrooms help to keep the clutter out of the kitchen and laundry room. Mudrooms are designed to incorporate things like coat closets for storing winter coats. They also include storage bins, cubbies, or lockers for storing things like skies and hockey sticks. A bench seat is a good feature to provide seating to remove dirty shoes. Some families use this area to house freezers. Other uses for mudrooms include being a dog kennel for the family dog.
How big should you design a mudroom?
At bare minimum, your mudroom design should be large enough to have a bench seat with storage beneath the bench for shoes and 3 to 4 coat hooks for hanging coats. A more comfortable mudroom will include a bench seat, coat closet, and a shelf for dropping keys and other small items. A wall mirror above the shelf is a nice add-on to check your appearance when leaving or returning home. If your design permits, a large expansive mudroom is highly recommended because you can truly make a nice buffer zone for your home. Here you can include your bench seat, coat closet, a shoe rack, an umbrella stand, additional shelving for keys and other small odd items, wall mirror, a utility sink to wash mud off or shoes, lockers or cubbies, storage bins, and a freezer.
Ultimately, the size and use of a mudroom is totally depended on the activities and lifestyle of the homeowner. However, a mudroom is an important area of the home. It is an essential part of the overall home design and planning process. At the very least, this room and the important square footage it uses, adds value to your home. Therefore, every homeowner should want one in their home.