How to create a boot room in your hallway, whatever the size of your home

With the Great British mud season now in full swing, many of us are also thrown into the annual autumn hallway struggle of mucky wellies, soggy coats and whatever the kids dragged in, cluttering and soiling the entrance to our homes. This means it’s also the season for coveting a boot room, a designated landing pad that you can shut the door on, with places for wet stuff, dirty stuff, and stuff that you just don’t want guests to see. No wonder searches for boot room ideas are up 40 per cent on Pinterest over the past quarter.

The boot room is also an opportunity for fun. “It’s a bit like the downstairs loo,” says Fiona Parke of Johnstone Parke Interiors. “You can be more adventurous.” Meanwhile, interior designer to the King Ben Pentreath (just imagine HRH’s palatial boot room) goes for “darker, muddier colours” on walls, and uses second-hand materials on the floor – stone flags, old quarry tiles, painted wooden boards – “which are more forgiving of dirt”.

The boot room is a status symbol, of course. The interior designer Tiffany Duggan of Studio Duggan says that you can easily spend £30,000 outfitting one with “full-on wraparound joinery and drawers lined with wood” (plus, those double butler sinks don’t come cheap). But should you not have the budget for bespoke, there are plenty of clever ways around it – here are some of the best.

The fully bespoke, dream boot room

Space is “the single most important thing on the boot room wishlist”, says Pentreath, author of An English Vision. “In new house design, people forget the importance of space for boots, coats, mud, stuff.” Number two, he adds, is a large cast-iron radiator: “You need to feel warmth if you’ve come in from a long, chilly walk. Then it’s useful to run copper pipes around the room to keep coats warm and dry.” Other “musts” are, he adds, “a good bench seat and a table”, but the biggest expense for this house on the estate of a Cornish castle was the beadboard panelling; custom cabinetry will also take a hefty chunk of budget. For the last word in luxury boot rooms, however, you’ll want a separate shower room for your dog. “If you have this in your life, you have clearly arrived at the point where you have nothing else to worry about,” says Pentreath. “Although often, people with this level of organisation are some of the most worried I know.”

This boot room in Cornwall is painted in Papers & Paints’ 4-050: “My old boss Charles Morris rudely calls it the colour of a freshly laid cowpat,” says Pentreath. “It’s a good colour for a room all about mud.”

The budget bespoke boot room

Being able to shut the door on muddy boots is a luxury, but all you really need, says Duggan, “is some tongue-and-groove on the walls, two rows of hooks (one at a high level, one low), and a cute little bench underneath. It’s a much cheaper way of doing it.” And why shell out for solid wood panelling when most visitors won’t spot that it’s painted MDF? Parke notes that you can find reasonably priced sheets of “T&G” from builders’ merchants (try Chiltern Timber) – panelling not only adds texture and warmth, but is practical, says Parke: “Eggshell paint is harder-wearing than emulsion, and easier to touch up.” And, of course, she says the less joinery there is, the cheaper it is. Definitely ditch the bespoke drawers – “the most expensive option” – Parke notes. Go for baskets on unpainted wooden shelves (“a painted surface will chip and scratch”). Or – great tip alert – there are “loads of highly-rated joiners on eBay making good joinery at affordable prices”.

The city solution

Most townies are not able to designate an entire room to mud, so co-habitation is the answer. For Seán McAlister of Pencil and Brick, a London-based architecture practice, the solution is a “boot wall” in the hallway, for which you’ll need a minimum of 300mm of depth. With Pencil and Brick’s projects involving plenty of Victorian terraces, that has sometimes meant knocking into the adjacent living room to “steal” space. And to optimise what space you have, the boot wall requires bespoke joinery fitted tight to the walls: “In a city home, you have to eke out every opportunity,” he says.

Because this is a small area, compared to its country-house counterpart, McAlister says the boot room needs to be “curated”. “You’ll see it every day, it has a disproportionate visual impact, so choose what the family buys carefully – don’t overcrowd it.” (He also insists on open storage, because wet stuff in closed cupboards will shorten their lifespan.) It’s crucial to conduct an audit, he says, “of your needs now and in 10 years’ time. This option is expensive [he estimates about £6,000 plus VAT] – you’ll want it to last.” McAlister also advises avoiding rich, heavy paint colours, “so they don’t compete with the rest of the hallway”. He adds: “You could get something in IKEA, but you’ll lose the beauty of handmade craftsmanship.”

The boot corner or cupboard

If you don’t need to cater for a big family and hordes of visitors, a boot corner may be all that’s needed. Louise Pope of Harrison & Pope, a Herefordshire-based kitchen designer and maker, built this boot bench into a cottage kitchen for clients who wanted “the essence of a boot room, on a much smaller scale”. Located inside the back door, the bespoke piece (which cost about £2,500) is just big enough for the client’s gardening shoes, outdoor clothes and basket of tools, with a seat to make changing shoes more comfortable. The high-use areas – the bench, shaker pegs and shelf – are made from hard-wearing oiled oak, while the paint colour (here, Cool Arbour by Little Greene) complements the rest of the kitchen.

Or, of course, you can go “statement”. Duggan says if there’s only enough space for a boot cupboard, the key is “not to make it look really boring – it can be a really beautiful piece”. In one London project, she painted a large antique double armoire a “beautiful, glossy rust-red, and hung lights inside, so it’s a bit of a moment when you open the doors”.

The no-build, no-budget boot room

This is technically still a hallway, but this version anticipates the muddy boots and the sprawl of paraphernalia. “People plan for the aesthetics of a boot room, but are then totally overwhelmed by the mess,” says professional home organiser Jenn Jordan of Orjenise. To deal with the mud and moisture, Jordan recommends Ikea’s Baggmuck shoe tray (£2.50), which fits under most shoe racks and will catch the mud that cracks off; if there’s room for a dehumidifier here, it will really help with all the wet outerwear (though perhaps less so the room’s aesthetics).

Jordan also advises a hard edit of seasonal accessories: “Flip flops and summery things should go into storage,” she says. “It makes organisation much easier.” And, she adds, you can never have too many pegs – low ones for kids, even lower ones for their bags. Gloves, scarves, dog leads – “anything coming and going daily” – can be allocated to small baskets. Create “structure and a label” for every category, says Jordan. “Even if your kids aren’t putting things back, it makes it twice as easy for you to.”

Boot room saviours

Antique Wash Wicker Lined Storage Basket, from £20, The Basket Company

Inglesham whitewash oak shoe storage bench, £425, Cotswold Company

Natural woven umbrella stand, £75, Burrow & Nest

Wooden boot jack, £40, Hunter Boots

Beadboard drying rack, from £129.99, Pulley Maid

Hare hook, £10.50, Yesterhome