The Creek Line House

6 Unconventional Design Ideas From Our Mudroom That Just Work

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We added our mudroom onto our house a few years ago, and now it’s a room I truly don’t think we could live without. Here’s a little tour of some of my favorite features in this space that make life just a little bit easier.

A low storage bench with drawers in our mudroom.

Our mudroom is such a hardworking space, and I really don’t know what we would do without this area to drop all our things, corral the mud, and keep us just a little more organized. Before we added this mudroom addition onto our home a few years ago, we had an old, sagging, closed-in porch here that wasn’t especially usable because it wasn’t heated and wasn’t well-sealed. It was really still an exterior space, so we couldn’t store anything in here, and we ended up with a big pile of coats and shoes in one corner of the kitchen. This room is now a comfortable extension of our home, and provides so much storage, as well as a comfortable place to set down shopping bags and backpacks, put on shoes, and hang up coats, hats, and scarves without them getting in the way of anything else. We really tried to think of everything when we did this project, and I really think we covered almost everything in this little room. I thought I would give you a little tour today of some of the things we did in here that are a little different from what you see in most mudrooms, but that really work well for us.

The Mudroom Before

You can kind of get an idea of what we were working with from these photos, but it’s really hard to tell just how much the room was slanting away from the house. It really was a mess!

The closed-in porch before we built the new mudroom.

The slanting flour of the old porch.

With this project, we basically removed the whole room from the house and rebuilt it as a new, fully interior room with proper support, insulation, electrical, and all that good stuff.

I tried to find a photo of the front of the house after we removed the mudroom, but I couldn’t find one for some reason, so here’s one of the new mudroom under construction. You can see here where we exposed the original brick exterior wall during construction, which was fun to be able to do.

The new mudroom addition with the exposed brick wall.

Unconventional Mudroom Design Ideas That Actually Work Really Well

Now that we spend so much time photographing beautiful homes for work, I’ve come to realize that a lot of the things we’ve done in this room are really quite unusual, and not what you see in most newly-designed mudrooms today. Everything from the layout to the way we used the cabinetry, to some of the extra little features are really very quirky and custom, but I like to think that this space’s quirks are really its best strengths. 🙂

Here are some of the best things we added.

Prioritized Horizontal Surfaces

A traditional mudroom with grey custom cabinetry.

Pictured Above: Runner | Cubby Baskets | French Market Basket | Umbrella | Wicker Stool | Favorite Garden Tool Set | Hunter Boots

Most newly-designed mudrooms put an emphasis on hidden storage with closed cabinetry and custom storage lockers to hide everything away. There will sometimes be a small bench or counter area somewhere in the space, but often you’ll find that all available wall space is taken up by floor-to-ceiling cabinets. While it’s lovely to hide all the clutter out of sight, this doesn’t necessarily work for the way people really live, and what they really need when they enter into their home after being away. We added a long, L-shaped bench around most of the room, as well as an extra counter space to allow for shopping bags and backpacks to be set down, and to provide somewhere for everyone to sit when they’re putting on their shoes.
This mudroom was completed in partnership with Kraftmaid Cabinets, and they helped us bring our design to life and provided all the custom cabinetry, which we then installed. The color we chose is one of their proprietary colors called “Greyloft.”
Shoe storage inside bench drawers.
Tiny mudroom drawers for sunglasses and other small accessories.

A Charging Cubby

While charging stations for phones and laptops are usually incorporated into kitchens and bedrooms, we had further charging needs that we wanted to address in this space, as frequent DIYers. Our power tools are in constant use, and since we have a detached garage, we wanted somewhere to charge the batteries for our tools in the house so we could continue to use our tools inside without having to trek all the way out to the garage every time a battery died. This little cubby tucked under the counter space keeps our batteries close at hand but out of sight.
More clever mud room organization ideas: 14 Inspiring, Inventive, and Practical Mud Room Storage Ideas

Heated Floors

Heated floors are comfortable and functional in a mudroom.

Heated flooring is often considered a luxurious, spa-like feature, and reserved for bathrooms and dressing rooms, but in this space, the heated flooring does double duty. Not only does it keep the room warm, but it also makes it extra inviting after coming in from the cold. It ensures all those snow pants, mittens, and beanies that get thrown down in here during the winter dry quickly and evenly.
Read more about how we installed our floors here: All About Our Easy-to-Install Heated Flooring System

A Wall of Windows

A traditional mudroom with lots of windows.

Mudrooms and boot rooms are usually seen as very utilitarian spaces, and are designed to be kept hidden away in the darkest corners of most homes. Instead of keeping ours hidden away, a wall of windows makes this an inviting space and even allows this room to function as a makeshift greenhouse during the darkest months of the year.

So Many Hooks

Hooks add easy storage in a mudroom and you can never have too many.

You’ll often see a few hooks in a mudroom, whether tucked away behind closed doors or on a wall above a bench, but I’d venture to say that most modern mudrooms don’t have nearly enough. Hooks can hold bags, coats, hats, sports medals, that bag of tulip bulbs that you need to remember to plant, or even that one very specific hat that you need to remember for tomorrow’s school theme day. Hooks just make life a little easier.

A Collection of Baskets on Full Display

A collection of vintage baskets hung near the ceiling.

Baskets are both useful and beautiful, and this little basket collection brings much-needed texture and whimsy to a space that is otherwise all about function first. (Read more about how I hung my baskets here) By using a removable tension rod, I made sure these baskets can be taken down and swapped out as needed for gardening, decorating, or holidays.
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.

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Comments

  1. Vicki says

    Love, love, love this mud room makeover! We don’t have a dedicated room such as this, but you have some great ideas that could be incorporated into smaller spaces like small entryways. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply

    • Courtenay says

      Hi Sarah! I’m not sure if I ever knew the exact name of this tile. It’s just a dark grey 12×24 ceramic tile. We have 12×24 slate in our master bathroom and we wanted something that would look similar to that, but in a more basic ceramic for the mudroom since that room obviously sees a lot of traffic.

      Reply

  4. Allison Adkins says

    Love the cabinets but what is the name of the actual bench drawer cabinet called and it’s dimensions? I can’t find them on the Kraftmaid site. This is so similar to our mudroom size and set up. Love the idea of the bench seating and cabinet spaces!!! Thank you for sharing.

    Reply

    • Courtenay says

      Hi Allison, I think your best bet is to reach out to Kraftmaid themselves. Our cabinets are custom and we worked with one of their designers to come up with the exact plans for our mudroom. We still just love these big drawers though! You really can’t go wrong with more drawers in a room like this!

      Reply

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