Entrance Hall

Q: We recently purchased a home with an exceptionally large entrance hall. It's difficult to furnish because it has several openings onto other rooms as well as a wide staircase. Equally perplexing are the glass sections on both sides of the door. Since they're the only source of daylight for the hall, I don't want to cover them, yet I also enjoy my privacy. What can I do with a hall like this?A: Don't despair. There are solutions to each of your problems.Let's start with the furnishing issue.

Eduardo Cini uses his creative skills daily in his job as a professional hair stylist. Off the job, the 47-year-old native of Malta employs that innate sense of design and color in his Baltimore County home. In August 2003 Cini purchased a two-story townhouse at The Beeches, a Towson community of cedar-sided homes complete with neighborhood pool and tennis courts. The setting is almost completely surrounded by woods, and deer roam an area architecturally designed for privacy. No house faces another, either in the front or back.

Q: I've got to do something with my large, virtually bare entrance hall. It does have a good-sized wall that can easily accommodate some kind of decoration. How do you suggest I furnish this space?A: The thing to remember about an entrance hall is that it's the first room in the home a visitor sees. Whatever impression is pTC made here will greatly influence someone's perception of the entire house. Keep in mind also that an entrance hall ought to be a pleasant place for you to say goodbye to your guests.

From the ornately decorated entrance hall of her Catonsville home, Andy Braid offers a somewhat unusual welcome to first-time visitors: "If you don't like Victorian, you're in the wrong house." No mistaking the era here. From the wraparound driveway off the wide, tree-lined street, through a cast-iron gate emblazoned "1895," along a flagstone path to a covered front porch dripping with gingerbread trim, the intent is clear - a trip back in time. "People feel like they're visiting grandma," said Braid, 49, chief operating officer at nearby Spring Grove Hospital Center.

Q: The first floor of my home has a gold-colored carpet and white walls. Its look is rather romantic, though in a traditional sort of way. I'd like the large entrance hall to make its own strong design statement, but I frankly can't afford to furnish it. Is there something you can suggest?A: I'll assume that your budget does permit additions other than furniture. If so, how about buying a decorative area rug that can cover much of the bare floor?The treatment seen in the photo might put you on course toward a solution.

Some architects are just as susceptible to trends and fads as are some interior designers. Because the creation of a building is an artistic process, it really isn't surprising for a new home to exhibit the test fashions in its physical layout.Occasionally, a recently constructed apartment may have a rather unusual, even awkward, configuration. One particularly noticeable development is the oversized entrance hall, often oddly shaped. Architects who include such a generously proportioned space in their blueprints are simply striving to make a distinctive statement, which is well on the way, however, to becoming commonplace.

The entrance hall in my house is small to begin with, and a staircase takes up one-third of its square footage. Can you suggest how to add some visual spark to what's now a nondescript space? I prefer traditional design, but I've got no room for an important piece of furniture. The secret to designing entrance halls, large or small, is to think not so much in terms of furniture but about color, texture and light. In a space the size of your own, that means giving emphasis to floor coverings, wallpaper and artwork.

We live in a townhouse that has an uninspired -- and uninspiring -- entrance hall. It's really just a long corridor with a door at the end that leads to a home office. There's also a staircase on one side of the entrance hall. How can this space be made more welcoming to guests?As it happens, I recently designed or, I should say, camouflaged an entrance hall a lot like yours. It was an uninteresting corridor-like space in a townhouse on the Baltimore harbor. With the help of various artisans -- and because the homeowners are adventurous souls -- the hall was transformed into a veritable Edwardian stage set.Cabinetmakers were brought in to install cherry wood paneling and embellished moldings.

Q: As part of a top-to-bottom home renovation, we're aiming to add a bit of elegance to awkward areas such as our small entrance hall. A friend suggeststhat the design can be improved by replacing the stair banister and handrail with something more decorative.A: A beautifully detailed balustrade compatible with your home's architecture and interior design will certainly introduce a note of elegance to the entrance hall. But you must be careful not to choose a design that's too elaborate or heavy in scale for your specific setting.

Q: My small entrance hall is a big bore. One way to brighten it up would be to hang a striped wallpaper. But I once lived in a house that had striped paper in the living room, and it made my eyes jump if I looked at it long enough.A: Many striped wallpapers do indeed produce the uncomfortable effect you describe. The problem can usually be avoided by steering clear of sharply contrasted stripes in the same depth or value of color. For example, stripes of bright blue and red in similar widths and depths of colors will almost certainly prove annoying after a minute or two.But even that may not be a problem in your situation.

The entrance hall in my house is small to begin with, and a staircase takes up one-third of its square footage. Can you suggest how to add some visual spark to what's now a nondescript space? I prefer traditional design, but I've got no room for an important piece of furniture. The secret to designing entrance halls, large or small, is to think not so much in terms of furniture but about color, texture and light. In a space the size of your own, that means giving emphasis to floor coverings, wallpaper and artwork.

Take a space and fill it with your life. Once a void, the space acquires the essence of you. That's how the favorite rooms in four Baltimore-area homes have evolved. With color, paintings, textiles and artifacts resonant of other worlds and times, the homeowners have assembled a universe of self-affirmation, celebration and remembrance. Inspired perhaps by a distinguished designer, family memories, a passion, or simply the clean, expectant walls of an art gallery, these rooms merge wider cultural sensibilities with personal vision and, as a result, are as distinctive as those who inhabit them.

When Michael and Ingrid Woods moved into their custom-built home in Carroll County, they initially decided to keep all of the walls white for one year until they could formulate a decorating scheme. "That lasted two months," said Michael Woods, a 48-year-old supervisor at Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. "Now every room's a different color." His wife of seven years, Ingrid Woods, 45, a senior administrator at BGE, does not deny her love of warm colors and is proud of her ability to create an ambience for every room in their 3,500-square- foot home.

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. - Standing in front of 49 fellow members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and before a sea of Chicago Cubs fans that made it seem "like a home game," the normally reserved Ryne Sandberg was emboldened to criticize current players for their emphasis on individual exploits over team play, their pursuit of home runs at the expense of offensive strategy and their reliance on something other than physical gifts to perform at the major...

For more than 20 years, Gus and Kathleen Strakes visualized a dream home that would accommodate their lifestyle, hobbies and love of cooking and entertaining. In September 2000, after a five-year search, they purchased a 7 3/4 -acre lot in the Monkton area. With ample input from the couple, Trinity Home Builders of Bel Air constructed a Georgian-style mansion on the property's highest ridge. The 7,000-square-foot, terra cotta brick home, together with the land, cost the couple $800,000.

Five years ago, Bob and Libby Younglove decided to sell what they called the "party house" - their large, Tudor-style home situated on two acres in Towson. Empty-nesters, they settled into Ruxton Crossing, a townhouse development nearby. They paid $220,000 for the brick and cedar-shake, end-of-group structure. It includes more than 3,000 square feet on three levels, a private deck and a two-car garage. Pleased with their purchase, they invested an additional $65,000 on designer fabrics, paint and demolition.

Q: An old but colorful Oriental rug covers our entrance hall, which leads to a wooden stairway, which is also in need of some kind of floor covering. We can't afford to buy antique Oriental carpeting for the stairs. Can you make an alternate recommendation that won't involve frequent maintenance?A: The category of "Oriental rugs" covers a multitude of styles as well as colors, so I'm not sure exactly what your rug looks like. I'll assume, though, that it's done in a large and geometric pattern with colors ranging from beige or red to deep blue, a fairly typical motif.

We live in a two-story, Spanish-colonial style home. The floor of the entrance hall is covered in ceramic tiles with a geometric design. We would like to emphasize the Spanish influence, but we can't afford many new furnishings. How can we make the house more consistently Spanish-colonial in its styling?The quickest and least expensive solution is probably to change the color and texture of the entrance hall. How about painting the stairway wall white and giving it a troweled stucco treatment?

Sandy Stellmann moved to a 4,800-square-foot Georgian-style home in Baltimore County five years ago, even though many people her age are scaling back when it comes to housing. "I grew up in a large house," the 61-year-old says, referring to her former Roland Park home. "I love different rooms to go in and out of, and I wanted a place for all of my furniture." Twice widowed and with grown children in homes of their own, Stellmann settled at the Cloisters at Charles, a condominium community off Charles Street, blocks from the city line.

More than 40 years ago, John Guerriero vowed to his wife, Angelina, that he would take her back to her roots. So it was that he built a home right next door to the small one in which she was born in Little Italy. Today, there is an almost Oz-like feeling that envelops a visitor upon approaching the house in the 200 block of S. Exeter St. "We're not in Little Italy anymore," the feeling seems to say. The house is constructed of tan brick, contrasting sharply with the darker facade of the adjacent St. Leo Roman Catholic Church's rectory.