Cannot see your picture...

What? You would rather have your guests come through your mud room than use the front door which leads to...kitchen and living room? What people come to your front door?

Maybe I don’t understand, but this seems exactly opposite of the problem many people have.

After re-reading, I think your problem is that you need a closet or coatrack just inside your front door. I am sure your visitors do not need to see your mud room.

I agree with Mrs. S. Feel free to keep using your side door for yourselves and very close friends or family who you can comfortably share your preference for that.

For more formal entertaining or guests you do you do not know as well, have a coat rack (a row of hooks on the wall if you don’t have floor space) with a bench or something they can use to take off their shoes and store them under, (if you insist on a no shoes policy). Or you could offer to take their coat for them, and hang it up in the coat closet or mud room yourself. And then you retrieve it for them at the end of the night.

The only other thing thing I can think of is taping a smallish sign with an arrow that says, “please use side door” or something like that.

Hi Mrs. S thanks for messaging.

So perhaps this is a verbiage problem? Where I live the mudroom is where everyone enters into the home foyer. In a mudroom it's usually sunny, warm and where people can leave their shoes and hang up their belongings. Walking in from the mudroom foyer the sitting room is left living and kitchen right. Here it's very rude to come into someone's kitchen/livingroom and leave the shoes\jackets in that area

the min you walk through the door you're standing in the livingroom area there is no foyer walk through

Perhaps I am wrong and should purchase an ottoman and hooks with a cute floor mat?

Hard to say without understanding more about the customs of where you live, regarding what is proper or not. I have never heard of a place where it’s actually considered rude to use the front door instead of a side door, but there’s still a lot of things I don’t know about I’m sure.

It’s not uncommon, however, to have no entryway. I have that same situation myself. We have hung a mirror that has a built in shelf with hooks below to hang coats and keys from. Shoes may be left on the rug in front of the door (which also helps define an entry area).

When guests come in, I assist them with where to put their belongings. Or take their coats for them and hang them up in a closet in another room.

Here’s one of the articles I came across that helped me how to figure out what to do with my place when I moved in a couple of years ago. Perhaps it will be helpful to you as well https://www.houzz.com/magazine/smart-solutions-for-nonexistent-entryways-stsetivw-vs~4823374

If u want to landscape yard close it in with fence garden with no gate people will naturally walk around. Not knowing your climate so I just picked a picture from my climate my house style to give u an idea

LOL I feel your pain Meaghan even though many here don't. Practical in real life beats fashion EVERY TIME in my world. If you park on the side I have to assume most of your visitors do also..I find if my garage doors are open people will enter through the garage instead of my front door--which I find annoying just because I feel it rude to make my guests troop through my garage. Clearly THEY are making the choice, but still...Bottom line short of a sign directing people to the other door, people do what they want to, they will come to the door closest to where they park.

What I would do: (and what would help with curb appeal), is a larger front porch. Then you can place a bench out there--sort of an outdoor mud room. But you don't want folks through the front door, I understand.

I'm curious where you live? And you still haven't answered about who are these people who come to your front door, but you'd prefer to have them come through the mudroom.

I'm thinking about my own home. We accept UPS packages, the plumber, kids' friends, my friends, the grandparents.... all through the front door. We do have a foyer there though, for the removal of wet things. The only people who actually enter through the other door are kids who are VERY familiar with our household (dogs etc), and who are perhaps mid-playdate with our own kids.

You can spend some time reading through other threads in design dilemmas. There has been one within the last week or so about the opposite problem--guests using backdoor when front door is somehow less obvious--though close by. Since your problem is the opposite, and based on your local culture, you can glean the advice and use it to your advantage. (painting front door to match siding so it disappears; removal front walkway; careful planting of bushes and trees to obscure what you want obscured; remove decoration from undesired door).

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/second-entrance-disguise-dsvw-vd~5691818#24064335

I guess, I am not understanding your culture either, since here it is nice to have guests use the front entrance. That said, My drive is also on the side, right by the attached carport. The entry I use and just about everyone else uses, because, it is right there close to parking, is the house entrance from the carport. It brings you in to open concept dining and kitchen, and to get to living room, you have to walk a few feet in the open hallway, to the living room doorway. Even delivery men use the carport to put packages etc in. I do like that idea, and I like plumbers etc, to use that entrance. I would, however, like guests, to use the front entrance, and no one ever does. If someone rings doorbell on front door, it is always a salesman of some type. My mud room is on the back side of the house, and no one that comes here, ever uses the back entrance, so I had a dog run put up, on that side, to just let the dog in and out easily.

To redirect guests and to add curb appeal, turn your entry into an arbor. Hide the front doors by painting them to match the siding. Then create a trellis on the three sides below the roof of the little portico. Plant blooming vines that are seriously invasive to quickly cover the 3-sided trellis. You may encourage them to grow over the roof too. The trick will be finding the right vine to do the job. You can see that these would easily cover a trellis pretty quickly. Someone will know the top one. There are some that will stay evergreen for you too.

Pink Jasmine

Chinese star jasmine

As the owner of a house in which the foyer is by far the most extravagant room (people were REALLY into impressing their guests during the Victorian era), I can't say I get your local customs either. My grandparents in the south always entered their house via garage or back patio entrance, as did family and close friends, but they still maintained a lovely foyer for anyone coming to the front door (because that's where you went if you didn't know otherwise - going around to the patio door if you weren't family/a close friend would have been presumptuous and rude).

I suppose if you really don't want anyone ever knocking on your front door, you could jackhammer the walkway from the sidewalk and replace with more grass and then plant a hedge across the front of the house. That would force people around to the driveway where they'd be more likely to find the side door before trying the front door.

Then again, how pervasive is this local use-the-sidedoor custom if you still need to herd visitors away from the front door?

Thank you every one for your kinkindness and advice. ILive in an area that is very rural. It is not normal where I am from, to not go through a mud room esp. if you are a regular to the home. (Mail person, any service worker, kids, family, friends, most neighbours will go through a mudroom) the only persons that would use the front are children on Halloween and unknown to the areas which is why we would like it more closed off. I love the Pickett fence idea with a little garden in the area. We are planning on rebuilding the area so there is more of a porch area and a fenced in garden would look very nice.