Keeping your family healthy is about more than just exercising and eating vegetables. It’s also about creating a healthy environment. A well-designed mudroom can be a brilliant idea for helping create a healthy entrance to your home. A mudroom, or boot room, is more than a space to collect things you need to take with you before you leave. If well designed it can also be an important ingredient to help you create a healthy home.
Image Source: Studio McGee
01 Mudrooms are Great for Entryway Storage
Firstly, mudrooms are a great addition to keeping family life sane! Providing organised storage for those everyday necessities can help to create more ease in your everyday/ school/ activities/sports routines with items at hand ready to go.
TIP: Having a 'designated space' for each family member's belongings can help streamline things further and assist with people taking responsibility for their own items. The below design by Berkeley Interiors is a brilliant example of this in action.
Image Source: Berkeley Interiors
You may think storage is blatantly obvious, but there is a second compelling reason for including a mudroom in your home to also consider...
02 Mudrooms Help to Create a Healthy Entrance by Eliminating Toxins from Entering Your Home
Mudrooms are also a great addition for helping control the toxins you allow to enter into your home. Yes, you read correctly, mudrooms improve occupant wellbeing on several levels, not just organizational.
So how do mudrooms help to create a “healthy entrance” to your home?
Think of all the harmful contaminants that are tracked indoors from occupants including; bacteria, heavy metals, landscaping, and agricultural pesticides, amongst other toxins.
Having a place where occupants can sit and remove shoes before entering the main residence is paramount to helping control these unwanted contaminants from entering your home.
Image Source: Pinterest, author unknown
03 Mudrooms Can Help Improve Air Quality & Comfort
Additionally, environmental pollutants may enter the home via the air that enters into the home every time entry doors are opened.
This has implications for;
1. The amount of pollution entering the home (depending on outdoor air quality in your environment)
2. Thermal Comfort of the home and keeping the temperature and humidity at an acceptable level, (something that comes into consideration when you live in a climate that is on the cooler end of the spectrum like myself)
Having a mudroom that you can walk through with a door at the other end as an “air lock” helps to slow the movement of air from outdoors to indoors.
Image Source: Pinterest, Author Unknown
Lastly, in regards to air quality of your home, mudrooms are often used to store waterproof jackets and other weatherproof outerwear that are made with harmful toxins such as PFCs. Keeping these stored in a room that is regularly “flushed out” with air (rather than say, in your closet), helps to minimize the impact of such hazardous chemicals on indoor air quality.
04 Mudroom Design Features for an Optimal Space
So now you know the why behind whether a mudroom is a good idea, let’s look at some of the elements I like to include in designing the ideal mudroom:
1. Entry airway seal (ie. Door dividing the internal space of the home from the mudroom as well as a door to the outdoor entry
2. Flooring finishes that are made with materials that facilitate easy cleaning.
3. Exterior Door mats outside the entrance as well as internal floor mats
4. A place to easily be able to sit to remove or put on footwear (love the incorporated bench in Amber Interiors' Design below)
5. Good organisation spaces including a mix of open and closed storage (if possible a personal space for each member of the family) where bags, coats, shoes, sporting gear can be neatly and efficiently stored
6. Somewhere to wash hands (for example a powder room/ toilet space off the mudroom) can also be a good idea to help prevent microbial pathogens, bacteria and viruses from entering your home. Something we are particularly careful about in these times of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A contemporary take on the classic mudroom including a handwashing station from Enoki's Woodside Residence project.
7. Lastly I also like to include a charging station for electronics to help encourage people to leave phones etc. at the door. Sometimes this is better suited to other areas of the house but is another way to help enhance your family's wellbeing by enhancing communication and connection through boundaries/ rules around phone use.
Hopefully this has shown you how mudrooms can play a much larger role than storage alone. If keeping your family healthy is a priority to you, don't forget to consider your home environment and particularly how a mudroom can play a part in creating a healthy entrance for your family home.
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