Hallway storage when the front door opens into the room

A lot of flats have no hall at all: the front door opens into the living room, or onto a 900mm square of floor that is also the route to the kitchen. The problem is not storage volume, it is that the five things an entrance has to absorb, coats, shoes, keys, post and bags, have nowhere of their own and end up distributed across the room. The fix is to define a zone rather than to buy furniture, and then to use the two surfaces nobody uses: the back of the door and the 150mm of depth beside it.

Decide where the entrance ends

An entrance works because it is a place where you stop, put things down and take things off. Without a wall to make that happen you have to mark it some other way, and the cheapest marker is the floor. A mat or a small rug, roughly the size of two people standing, tells everyone including you that this is the taking off area and the rest is the room.

Then give the zone a vertical edge. A tall narrow piece of furniture, a screen, a plant, the end of a bookcase, anything that breaks the sightline from the sofa to the door. It does not need to block anything. It needs to stop the coats being visible from the place you sit, which is most of what makes an open plan entrance feel like a pile of outdoor clothes in a living room.

Everything after this is easier once the zone exists, because every decision has an obvious place to go. Without it, each item gets placed on its own merits and they scatter.

Depth is the constraint, not width

The number that matters in a small entrance is how far something sticks out into the walking route. Below about 150mm, a wall mounted thing is effectively invisible and nobody collides with it. At 300mm, which is the depth of a standard shallow shelf unit, people will catch a shoulder on it in a 900mm space.

So the order of preference is: on the back of the door, then on the wall at under 150mm deep, then on the floor against a wall under 300mm deep, then freestanding. Work down that list rather than starting at the bottom of it, which is what happens when somebody buys a shoe cabinet first.

A wall rail is the clearest example of the first rule paying off. A cast iron coat rail mounted flat to the wall projects only as far as the coats on it do, and the ribs give several hooks along 400mm of wall rather than one hook per fixing. A coat on a hook still occupies about 200mm of depth, so put the rail where the depth already exists, beside the door rather than opposite it.

The back of the door is the free surface

An over door hook rail costs very little, needs no fixings, and uses space that is otherwise doing nothing. It is also the only no hole option that will genuinely hold a wet winter coat, because the load goes into the top edge of the door and down through the hinges.

Two things to check. First, the gap between the top of the door and the frame: an over door hook adds 5mm to 15mm there, and on a door that already closes tightly it will stop the door shutting. Second, whether the door opens against a wall, because hooks on the back of a door that swings flat to a wall will mark the plaster and eventually stop the door opening fully.

Adhesive hooks are worth being honest about. They hold a scarf, a cap, a tote bag, a dog lead and a key. They do not hold a wet wool coat, and the way they fail is by releasing all at once some days later, usually when the load has been hanging long enough that nobody is watching. Use them for light things in multiples, and drill for anything heavy.

Shoes, which take more floor than anybody plans for

A pair of shoes occupies about 300mm by 200mm on the floor. Four people's worth of current shoes is a square metre, which does not exist in a flat with no hall, which is why shoes end up in a drift by the door.

Two things help. Vertical stacking, meaning a narrow rack rather than a wide one, three tiers at 250mm deep against a wall rather than one row in a line. And a hard rule that only in use shoes live by the door: everything else goes in a bedroom. The rule is what works, not the rack.

Boots are a separate problem because they are tall, they fall over, and in winter they are wet. Give them their own tray with a lip, stand them against the wall rather than in the route, and accept that a boot tray in a small flat is going to be visible. A dark tray on a dark floor is less visible than a clear plastic one, which is one of the few genuinely useful decorating decisions in this subject.

Keys and post, the two things that cause the most friction

Keys need one place, within arm's reach of the door, at roughly hip to chest height, and ideally something you drop them into rather than hang them on. A dish or a bowl works better than a hook for most people because it needs no aim. The open topped skull does this job as a catchall with a tray in the top and a jaw for loose change, and anything with a deep enough well will do.

Post is the item that quietly defeats small entrances, because it arrives daily and has no home. One shallow container, emptied weekly, is the whole answer, and the emptying is the part that matters. A letter rack that is never cleared becomes an archive and then a surface for other things.

Put both at the same height on the same surface. If keys and post are in two different places, one of them is the wrong place and will be abandoned within a month. A shallow wall unit with compartments, something along the lines of the coffin wall shelf, covers keys, post and the small things that otherwise live on the floor, and at under 150mm deep it stays out of the walking route.

What to screw into, in a flat

Most flats, especially modern ones, have plasterboard partitions and masonry outside walls. Plasterboard with nothing behind it will not hold a loaded coat rail on ordinary plugs: the plug pulls through the board and takes a cone of plaster with it.

Find the studs with a magnet, which locates the screws holding the board on, and fix into the timber if you can. If the stud is in the wrong place, use proper metal cavity anchors rated for the load rather than the grey plastic plugs that come in the box, and spread the load over as many fixings as the fitting allows.

Fix at the right height while you are at it. A coat hook at 1.6m to 1.7m lets a long coat hang clear of the floor. At 1.4m the hem of a trench coat sits in the dust and in whatever the boots brought in. And remember the load on an entrance fixing is not the weight of the coat, it is somebody pulling a stuck sleeve downwards in a hurry.

Questions people actually ask

How do you make an entryway when there is no hall?

Mark the zone with a mat and break the sightline from the seating with something tall, then work down a list of depths: back of the door first, wall fittings under 150mm deep next, floor storage under 300mm after that. The zone is what stops the five entrance items scattering into the room.

How deep can hallway storage be in a narrow space?

Under 150mm on a wall goes unnoticed, and 300mm on the floor is the limit in a passage under about a metre wide. A coat on a hook adds roughly 200mm of its own, so put hooks where the depth already exists rather than opposite a door.

Can you hang a coat rack on the back of a door?

Yes, and an over door rail is the best no hole option because the load passes into the top of the door and down through the hinges. Check it does not stop the door closing, and check the door does not swing flat against a wall, which the hooks will then mark.

Where should keys go in a small flat?

One place, within arm's reach of the door, at hip to chest height, and a dish rather than a hook, because dropping needs no aim. Keep it on the same surface as the post, since two separate places means one will be abandoned.