Feng Shui & Front Entrances – Welcoming the New Year into Your Home

The New Year is a great time to enhance the front entrance and foyer area of your home. Here, an openly welcoming environment symbolizes your desire to embrace life’s joyful experiences, helpful people, and golden opportunities. Roll out the welcome mat, and make it literally “entranc-ing.”

The front entrance is where people register first and lasting impressions about you. Design the outside approach to your front door to include a wide, meandering pathway that’s distinct from the driveway, clear of obstacles and overgrown foliage, and well lit at night. Let every season lend its spirit to this area, whether it’s a display of summer flowers, glossy evergreens, or silvery succulents and herbs. Whatever form it takes, nature’s offerings can draw attention directly to your front door and frame the jewel that is your home.

Add your own special touches and beauty marks such as outdoor seating, arbors, statuary, and water features. Even in the most confined circumstances, flowers, wind chimes, or a seasonal wreath on the door can welcome you and your loved ones home.

In Feng Shui, the color red is traditionally associated with celebration and is used to attract good fortune into the home. Consider painting your front door an appealing shade of red such as crimson, terracotta, or burgundy. Or choose a door that attracts the eye with its artistic appeal. For your safety and comfort, the front door or a nearby window should allow you to see out without your visitor seeing in until you’ve opened the door.

If you live where you’re unable to enhance the outside of your front entrance, focus on making your interior foyer area welcoming and gracious. Once inside the front door, an inviting foyer can always provide a warm embrace.

Traditionally, the best painting in the house is hung near the front door as the “greeter,” to honor guests and make an especially pleasing first impression. In a large foyer, you can also display beautiful items such as an aquarium or fountain, statuary, plants, and furniture. Whether large or small, be careful not to overcrowd the foyer in an effort to make it attractive. Be sure to remove anything that impinges on the full use of front or closet doors, and keep the area clear of migrating possessions such as toys, papers, and sports equipment.

Ideally, all the entrances into your home have a special ambience. If you use an entrance that opens into a laundry room, hallway, or garage, give it some charm! Be sure you’re greeted by beauty and light, not darkness and clutter, so that you’re uplifted by the first impressions of your own home. A favorite poster in the laundry room or elegant mirror in a hallway can make all the difference. Some people turn these areas into fun art galleries, displaying photographs and personal mementos that don’t fit in other areas of the house. Others include posh possessions near an everyday entrance, such as an oil painting or crystal chandelier, even in the garage. If you’ll enjoy it there everyday, why not! Whatever you choose, your enhancements are well placed when they are the “kiss” that welcomes you home.

Your personal creative touch warms your home’s entrances and makes a strong statement. It says, quite literally, that you WELCOME the best life has to offer into your home, including fabulous opportunities and relationships with your family, friends, business associates, neighbors, and community.

May you enter into a Happy New Year!