Discover how premium light-filtering materials and smart-home automation can secure street-level entryway glass without losing natural daylight. Choosing the right window treatments for a home's front entrance is one of the most challenging design decisions a homeowner can face. The front door is the focal point of a home's curb appeal, often featuring expansive glass panels or side-by-side double doors designed to make a grand architectural statement. During the day, these large glass features are an asset, flooding entryways and foyers with beautiful natural daylight. However, for homes situated on busy local roads or highly trafficked street-level lots, the dynamic completely changes once the sun goes down. The moment interior lights are switched on in the evening, a stark contrast is created with the dark outdoors. This creates a severe privacy issue, leaving the entire foyer completely exposed to passing traffic and pedestrians. Finding a solution that delivers absolute evening privacy without permanently plunging the front entrance into darkness during the day requires understanding how modern window treatment materials and operating systems interact. Light-Filtering vs. Blackout Fabrics The first step in solving street-level privacy is selecting the correct fabric type. Many homeowners mistakenly assume they need heavy, opaque blackout shades to secure their home from outside eyes at night. While blackout fabrics certainly block 100% of the view, they also block 100% of the natural daylight during the day, forcing you to constantly raise and lower the shades just to see inside your own foyer. A more effective approach for entryways utilizes premium light-filtering materials. These specialized fabrics are engineered with a precise, tight weave that operates on the principles of directional light and optical density. Daytime Functionality: When the sun is shining outside, the exterior light levels are significantly higher than the interior light levels. The light-filtering fabric diffuses the intense, direct sunlight into a soft, ambient glow throughout the entryway. This keeps the home bright, eliminates harsh glares, and protects interior hardwood flooring, paint, and trim from damaging UV rays. Night-Time Functionality: At night, the lighting dynamic reverses. The interior foyer lights make the inside bright, while the outside is dark. Because of the specialized tight weave, the fabric blocks the transmission of clear shapes and details. To a person standing out on the street or driving by on a busy road, the view inside is completely obstructed, delivering total privacy when the family is home for the evening. Challenges of Front Door Installations Securing privacy for a double wide front entrance introduces unique structural hurdles that standard windows do not face. Traditional blinds with hanging cords or manual pull chains are poorly suited for front doors. They disrupt the clean architectural lines of a grand foyer, create a safety hazard, and can easily get tangled or damaged when the doors are opened and closed. The window treatments must be mounted high and wide enough above the door trim to ensure that the front doors can swing open and close freely without ever catching on the fabric or the lower hem bar. How We Applied These Principles in Sherrills Ford, NC Applying these exact educational principles to real-world homes is what Cole and I do every day at Bloomin' Blinds of North Charlotte. We recently worked with a homeowner in Sherrills Ford whose beautiful new construction property sat on a highly trafficked road. They loved their double wide front door entrance but felt entirely too exposed to the street at night. We brought our mobile showroom directly to their driveway. This allowed us to hold up premium light-filtering fabric samples directly against their entryway glass, matching the materials perfectly to their home's natural lighting, interior paint, and trim before making a single cut. To solve their street-level privacy issue, we custom-built and installed two matching light-filtering roller shades, mounting them flawlessly side-by-side above the front door frame. To keep the home’s interior design completely cohesive, we carried the exact same style to the back of the house, installing a matching single roller shade on the rear door. Smart Home Window Automation at Your Fingertips Because entryway windows can be tall and awkward to reach manually, our family team integrated advanced smart-home motorization into this Sherrills Ford project. Beyond the convenience of a handheld remote control, these automated roller shades feature seamless Wi-Fi integration. The homeowners can control their privacy through a dedicated smartphone app or link the system directly to their existing voice-activated smart home networks, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit. This allows for complete hands-free window automation. The clients can program custom daily routines—such as setting the front entry shades to automatically lower exactly at sunset—or simply use a voice command to secure the foyer instantly from the comfort of the couch.

For many of us, our mudroom is often the first place we enter when arriving home. For our clients, a family of four with 2 young children, the mudroom had to be well designed with ample storage and an efficient lay-out. A combination of closed door and open shelving provides an abundance of storage and hanging space to house everything from boots, shoes, coats and miscellaneous gear. Ample shelving provides space for baskets of varying sizes to corral a plethora of smaller items. A generous cushioned bench for and decorative deer hooks installed above it for those easy to access items allows the family to hang and organize things and still have a space that looks clean and organized. Personal storage lockers with screen doors also provide a separated space for each person so that things can be easily stored, found and retrieved.

Huge transitional master ceramic tile, beige floor and double-sink bathroom photo in Minneapolis with shaker cabinets, beige cabinets, beige walls, an undermount sink, quartz countertops, a hinged shower door, beige countertops and a built-in vanity

We designed this mudroom to inspire happiness and joy for every entry and exit from our Berkeley Tudor project. The custom cut-to-fit sisal rug and lotus flower wallpaper bring neutral colors in to balance out the hot pink cabinetry. Each member of the family has a nook with hooks for backpacks, bags, shoes, and coats. We chose to mix walnut with the pink finish as stained woods can take the wear and tear more easily than painted finishes. Closed cabinets and cubbies for baskets offer additional storage for shoes and other items.

For many of us, our mudroom is often the first place we enter when arriving home. For our clients, a family of four with 2 young children, the mudroom had to be well designed with ample storage and an efficient lay-out. A combination of closed door and open shelving provides an abundance of storage and hanging space to house everything from boots, shoes, coats and miscellaneous gear. Ample shelving provides space for baskets of varying sizes to corral a plethora of smaller items. A generous cushioned bench for and decorative deer hooks installed above it for those easy to access items allows the family to hang and organize things and still have a space that looks clean and organized. Personal storage lockers with screen doors also provide a separated space for each person so that things can be easily stored, found and retrieved.

Simple but a much needed multi-functional entry keypad that is lite to easily read the labeled buttons. Lutron Lighting Control at your fingertips. Photo by Echo Workshop

Discover how premium light-filtering materials and smart-home automation can secure street-level entryway glass without losing natural daylight. Choosing the right window treatments for a home's front entrance is one of the most challenging design decisions a homeowner can face. The front door is the focal point of a home's curb appeal, often featuring expansive glass panels or side-by-side double doors designed to make a grand architectural statement. During the day, these large glass features are an asset, flooding entryways and foyers with beautiful natural daylight. However, for homes situated on busy local roads or highly trafficked street-level lots, the dynamic completely changes once the sun goes down. The moment interior lights are switched on in the evening, a stark contrast is created with the dark outdoors. This creates a severe privacy issue, leaving the entire foyer completely exposed to passing traffic and pedestrians. Finding a solution that delivers absolute evening privacy without permanently plunging the front entrance into darkness during the day requires understanding how modern window treatment materials and operating systems interact. Light-Filtering vs. Blackout Fabrics The first step in solving street-level privacy is selecting the correct fabric type. Many homeowners mistakenly assume they need heavy, opaque blackout shades to secure their home from outside eyes at night. While blackout fabrics certainly block 100% of the view, they also block 100% of the natural daylight during the day, forcing you to constantly raise and lower the shades just to see inside your own foyer. A more effective approach for entryways utilizes premium light-filtering materials. These specialized fabrics are engineered with a precise, tight weave that operates on the principles of directional light and optical density. Daytime Functionality: When the sun is shining outside, the exterior light levels are significantly higher than the interior light levels. The light-filtering fabric diffuses the intense, direct sunlight into a soft, ambient glow throughout the entryway. This keeps the home bright, eliminates harsh glares, and protects interior hardwood flooring, paint, and trim from damaging UV rays. Night-Time Functionality: At night, the lighting dynamic reverses. The interior foyer lights make the inside bright, while the outside is dark. Because of the specialized tight weave, the fabric blocks the transmission of clear shapes and details. To a person standing out on the street or driving by on a busy road, the view inside is completely obstructed, delivering total privacy when the family is home for the evening. Challenges of Front Door Installations Securing privacy for a double wide front entrance introduces unique structural hurdles that standard windows do not face. Traditional blinds with hanging cords or manual pull chains are poorly suited for front doors. They disrupt the clean architectural lines of a grand foyer, create a safety hazard, and can easily get tangled or damaged when the doors are opened and closed. The window treatments must be mounted high and wide enough above the door trim to ensure that the front doors can swing open and close freely without ever catching on the fabric or the lower hem bar. How We Applied These Principles in Sherrills Ford, NC Applying these exact educational principles to real-world homes is what Cole and I do every day at Bloomin' Blinds of North Charlotte. We recently worked with a homeowner in Sherrills Ford whose beautiful new construction property sat on a highly trafficked road. They loved their double wide front door entrance but felt entirely too exposed to the street at night. We brought our mobile showroom directly to their driveway. This allowed us to hold up premium light-filtering fabric samples directly against their entryway glass, matching the materials perfectly to their home's natural lighting, interior paint, and trim before making a single cut. To solve their street-level privacy issue, we custom-built and installed two matching light-filtering roller shades, mounting them flawlessly side-by-side above the front door frame. To keep the home’s interior design completely cohesive, we carried the exact same style to the back of the house, installing a matching single roller shade on the rear door. Smart Home Window Automation at Your Fingertips Because entryway windows can be tall and awkward to reach manually, our family team integrated advanced smart-home motorization into this Sherrills Ford project. Beyond the convenience of a handheld remote control, these automated roller shades feature seamless Wi-Fi integration. The homeowners can control their privacy through a dedicated smartphone app or link the system directly to their existing voice-activated smart home networks, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit. This allows for complete hands-free window automation. The clients can program custom daily routines—such as setting the front entry shades to automatically lower exactly at sunset—or simply use a voice command to secure the foyer instantly from the comfort of the couch.

To create a welcoming effect I designed this room with a sitting lounge so that my client can easily entertain his guest without really bothering to go to the main sitting room. I chose an L-shaped light gray leather chair to fit into the curved corner. Silk curtains in two tones; gold and metallic with silk tie-back.

Discover how premium light-filtering materials and smart-home automation can secure street-level entryway glass without losing natural daylight. Choosing the right window treatments for a home's front entrance is one of the most challenging design decisions a homeowner can face. The front door is the focal point of a home's curb appeal, often featuring expansive glass panels or side-by-side double doors designed to make a grand architectural statement. During the day, these large glass features are an asset, flooding entryways and foyers with beautiful natural daylight. However, for homes situated on busy local roads or highly trafficked street-level lots, the dynamic completely changes once the sun goes down. The moment interior lights are switched on in the evening, a stark contrast is created with the dark outdoors. This creates a severe privacy issue, leaving the entire foyer completely exposed to passing traffic and pedestrians. Finding a solution that delivers absolute evening privacy without permanently plunging the front entrance into darkness during the day requires understanding how modern window treatment materials and operating systems interact. Light-Filtering vs. Blackout Fabrics The first step in solving street-level privacy is selecting the correct fabric type. Many homeowners mistakenly assume they need heavy, opaque blackout shades to secure their home from outside eyes at night. While blackout fabrics certainly block 100% of the view, they also block 100% of the natural daylight during the day, forcing you to constantly raise and lower the shades just to see inside your own foyer. A more effective approach for entryways utilizes premium light-filtering materials. These specialized fabrics are engineered with a precise, tight weave that operates on the principles of directional light and optical density. Daytime Functionality: When the sun is shining outside, the exterior light levels are significantly higher than the interior light levels. The light-filtering fabric diffuses the intense, direct sunlight into a soft, ambient glow throughout the entryway. This keeps the home bright, eliminates harsh glares, and protects interior hardwood flooring, paint, and trim from damaging UV rays. Night-Time Functionality: At night, the lighting dynamic reverses. The interior foyer lights make the inside bright, while the outside is dark. Because of the specialized tight weave, the fabric blocks the transmission of clear shapes and details. To a person standing out on the street or driving by on a busy road, the view inside is completely obstructed, delivering total privacy when the family is home for the evening. Challenges of Front Door Installations Securing privacy for a double wide front entrance introduces unique structural hurdles that standard windows do not face. Traditional blinds with hanging cords or manual pull chains are poorly suited for front doors. They disrupt the clean architectural lines of a grand foyer, create a safety hazard, and can easily get tangled or damaged when the doors are opened and closed. The window treatments must be mounted high and wide enough above the door trim to ensure that the front doors can swing open and close freely without ever catching on the fabric or the lower hem bar. How We Applied These Principles in Sherrills Ford, NC Applying these exact educational principles to real-world homes is what Cole and I do every day at Bloomin' Blinds of North Charlotte. We recently worked with a homeowner in Sherrills Ford whose beautiful new construction property sat on a highly trafficked road. They loved their double wide front door entrance but felt entirely too exposed to the street at night. We brought our mobile showroom directly to their driveway. This allowed us to hold up premium light-filtering fabric samples directly against their entryway glass, matching the materials perfectly to their home's natural lighting, interior paint, and trim before making a single cut. To solve their street-level privacy issue, we custom-built and installed two matching light-filtering roller shades, mounting them flawlessly side-by-side above the front door frame. To keep the home’s interior design completely cohesive, we carried the exact same style to the back of the house, installing a matching single roller shade on the rear door. Smart Home Window Automation at Your Fingertips Because entryway windows can be tall and awkward to reach manually, our family team integrated advanced smart-home motorization into this Sherrills Ford project. Beyond the convenience of a handheld remote control, these automated roller shades feature seamless Wi-Fi integration. The homeowners can control their privacy through a dedicated smartphone app or link the system directly to their existing voice-activated smart home networks, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit. This allows for complete hands-free window automation. The clients can program custom daily routines—such as setting the front entry shades to automatically lower exactly at sunset—or simply use a voice command to secure the foyer instantly from the comfort of the couch.

Discover how premium light-filtering materials and smart-home automation can secure street-level entryway glass without losing natural daylight. Choosing the right window treatments for a home's front entrance is one of the most challenging design decisions a homeowner can face. The front door is the focal point of a home's curb appeal, often featuring expansive glass panels or side-by-side double doors designed to make a grand architectural statement. During the day, these large glass features are an asset, flooding entryways and foyers with beautiful natural daylight. However, for homes situated on busy local roads or highly trafficked street-level lots, the dynamic completely changes once the sun goes down. The moment interior lights are switched on in the evening, a stark contrast is created with the dark outdoors. This creates a severe privacy issue, leaving the entire foyer completely exposed to passing traffic and pedestrians. Finding a solution that delivers absolute evening privacy without permanently plunging the front entrance into darkness during the day requires understanding how modern window treatment materials and operating systems interact. Light-Filtering vs. Blackout Fabrics The first step in solving street-level privacy is selecting the correct fabric type. Many homeowners mistakenly assume they need heavy, opaque blackout shades to secure their home from outside eyes at night. While blackout fabrics certainly block 100% of the view, they also block 100% of the natural daylight during the day, forcing you to constantly raise and lower the shades just to see inside your own foyer. A more effective approach for entryways utilizes premium light-filtering materials. These specialized fabrics are engineered with a precise, tight weave that operates on the principles of directional light and optical density. Daytime Functionality: When the sun is shining outside, the exterior light levels are significantly higher than the interior light levels. The light-filtering fabric diffuses the intense, direct sunlight into a soft, ambient glow throughout the entryway. This keeps the home bright, eliminates harsh glares, and protects interior hardwood flooring, paint, and trim from damaging UV rays. Night-Time Functionality: At night, the lighting dynamic reverses. The interior foyer lights make the inside bright, while the outside is dark. Because of the specialized tight weave, the fabric blocks the transmission of clear shapes and details. To a person standing out on the street or driving by on a busy road, the view inside is completely obstructed, delivering total privacy when the family is home for the evening. Challenges of Front Door Installations Securing privacy for a double wide front entrance introduces unique structural hurdles that standard windows do not face. Traditional blinds with hanging cords or manual pull chains are poorly suited for front doors. They disrupt the clean architectural lines of a grand foyer, create a safety hazard, and can easily get tangled or damaged when the doors are opened and closed. The window treatments must be mounted high and wide enough above the door trim to ensure that the front doors can swing open and close freely without ever catching on the fabric or the lower hem bar. How We Applied These Principles in Sherrills Ford, NC Applying these exact educational principles to real-world homes is what Cole and I do every day at Bloomin' Blinds of North Charlotte. We recently worked with a homeowner in Sherrills Ford whose beautiful new construction property sat on a highly trafficked road. They loved their double wide front door entrance but felt entirely too exposed to the street at night. We brought our mobile showroom directly to their driveway. This allowed us to hold up premium light-filtering fabric samples directly against their entryway glass, matching the materials perfectly to their home's natural lighting, interior paint, and trim before making a single cut. To solve their street-level privacy issue, we custom-built and installed two matching light-filtering roller shades, mounting them flawlessly side-by-side above the front door frame. To keep the home’s interior design completely cohesive, we carried the exact same style to the back of the house, installing a matching single roller shade on the rear door. Smart Home Window Automation at Your Fingertips Because entryway windows can be tall and awkward to reach manually, our family team integrated advanced smart-home motorization into this Sherrills Ford project. Beyond the convenience of a handheld remote control, these automated roller shades feature seamless Wi-Fi integration. The homeowners can control their privacy through a dedicated smartphone app or link the system directly to their existing voice-activated smart home networks, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit. This allows for complete hands-free window automation. The clients can program custom daily routines—such as setting the front entry shades to automatically lower exactly at sunset—or simply use a voice command to secure the foyer instantly from the comfort of the couch.

Ryan Rosene
Inspiration for a mid-sized coastal entryway remodel in San Francisco with white walls and a medium wood front door

Monica Perrone The existing landscape layout, complete with useless curves and single steps, frustrated the homeowners and kept them from entertaining family and friends. Elimination of all but the pool, mature trees and perimeter fencing was the only way to make it right. Custom-cut Travertine paving, local crushed rock and clean lines designed for a modern garden and pool remodel were the solution. Corten steel picket fence, gates and planters compliment the scene. Careful design details for drainage within stone expanses and at pool and spa remodel protect the contemporary layout and eliminate the use of plastics and short-lived solutions.

For many of us, our mudroom is often the first place we enter when arriving home. For our clients, a family of four with 2 young children, the mudroom had to be well designed with ample storage and an efficient lay-out. A combination of closed door and open shelving provides an abundance of storage and hanging space to house everything from boots, shoes, coats and miscellaneous gear. Ample shelving provides space for baskets of varying sizes to corral a plethora of smaller items. A generous cushioned bench for and decorative deer hooks installed above it for those easy to access items allows the family to hang and organize things and still have a space that looks clean and organized. Personal storage lockers with screen doors also provide a separated space for each person so that things can be easily stored, found and retrieved.

Nestled in the pristine beauty of the north woods of Wisconsin is the natural landscape of majestic trees, clear spring fed lakes, fascinating wildlife and exhilarating outdoor recreational activities. It is inviting to many families, friends and couples throughout the year The lakes in particular provide for an enormous amount of fun and relaxation. For those so fortunate to have a property it is customary to have a boathouse to store your swimming or boating gear and equipment. Recently Parrett was selected to provide windows and doors for a new boathouse and replacement windows and doors for an existing home. The boathouse windows consisted of folding windows and doors allowing for opening the windows the complete 10 foot expanse. These same doors were backed by a full length horizontal pulled screen. The folding window system was set on the second level loft designed as an elevated viewing area of the lake. Mulled directly to the top of the folding window was a Napoleon shaped direct set. On the opposite side of the second level was a window system matching the shape of the lakeside window system. The upper mulled window was a duplicate of the window on the lake side however the window below consisted of four awning windows. Due to the awnings being elevated from the lower floor and not easily accessible the windows were set up with individual electronic motors for operation which can be operated by either a switch or a remote control. The system allows for operating all of the windows at once or individually. The windows were made out of solid mahogany to the interior and a high performance woodgrain aluminum clad to the exterior. The lower boathouse door is a four panel solid mahogany plank style folding door system with a horizontal pull screen. Greeting anyone entering the boathouse is a custom designed entry door which has a carved pattern to the exterior emulating an owl. The owl door was made out of solid white oak and bordered with a 10 inch wide flat casing with a 12 inch keystone and plinth blocks located on top. Parrett was proud to be part of this fun, picturesque and very functional project.

Example of a 1960s shed design in Denver

The primary objective for this two storey, five bedroom, three car garage home design was functionality & maximizing use of space for a busy family with four young children all involved with extracurricular activities. Enter through the impressive 9’ tall solid wood door into a two storey volume space with a large foyer flowing into the main living areas. Prom inent features are the contemporary styling with modern finishes throughout, mixed with distinctive rustic elements such as a custom fabricated fireplace mantle, furniture, décor, & doors using over 100 year old barn beams & planks. Off the foyer you can access a large home office, & the main ""U""-shaped stairwell, custom fabricated with a steel frame structure & 3"" thick open risers from the basement to the 2nd floor. A large modern style kitchen with walk-in Pantry, & full height cabinetry (10'), with a huge island with stools ties into the main Dining Room which also leads to the outdoor covered Lanai easily accessed through a 16' wide, 6 panel bifold door tying the indoor/outdoor living space together. A few more steps down leads you to the swimming pool area & cabana. The Great Room elevates to a 15’ ceiling height, with expansive windows flooding the space with natural light. For convenience, the mudroom can be accessed from a side entry, & is furnished with a bench to accommodate all 6 family members, with a special feature built-in slide for hockey bags & equipment. The laundry room can be accessed off the mudroom & enclosed with a sliding barn door, The second floor features four individual children's bedrooms with shared ensuites & a Master Bedroom with fireplace & access to a private balcony retreat, & spacious walk-in closet with full ensuite & a morning kitchen built-in.

This larger home, constructed on Martha’s Vineyard, is a collection of informal, dormered gable components and grounding one-story, shed-roof elements that reduce its overall scale. Designed to take advantage of a gently sloping up-Island property, this 5500 sq. ft. (not including finished basement) six-bedroom home includes staggered floor levels that climb from the front of the site to the rear. Generous, open living space on the entry level -- anchored on the west end by a fireplace and on the east end by the kitchen -- borders a dining area that’s nestled under a roof which also shelters the adjacent wrap-around porch. A deck off the rear of the dining space extends around the kitchen and is easily accessible from the nearby family room, too. Bedrooms occupy the other above-grade levels, including, at the upper-most level, the master suite comprised of a study, roof deck, master bath, walk-in closets and the master bedroom. A clean-lined interior of warm neutrals sets a soothing tone in which the Island landscape is welcomed through expansive windows, porches and decks. Clad in white cedar shingles with a red cedar roof, the West Tisbury House will softly weather in-tune with its meadow site. Katie Hutchison Studio collaborated with Geoffrey Koper Architect of Yarmouth Port, Mass. on the West Tisbury House. Kitchen fit-out and interior finishes, fixtures, and furnishings by others. photo by Katie Hutchison

Nothing slows down this cowboy - after a stroll outside he has a comfortable place to kick off his boots at the door and can easily ride down to the lower level family room on his powered chair lift. Photo credit - Justin Ongley

Simple and beautiful, our best selling wall hooks are perfect for your entryway, bedroom, or nursery. Made of Oak, choose your five hooks from seven different colors to best compliment your home and keep your things off the floor. These can hold heavy bags and coats easily (up to 8 LB).