10 Great Mudroom Designs: From Layout to Amenities

Some of Our Favorite Homes Have Useful "Second Entrances"

 

Mud rooms are must-have features for plenty of people when building a home.

They’ve been a popular inclusion for decades, due mainly to their many functions.

To some families, a mud room is more of an “unpack from the day and put on your slippers” kind of area. It may also be called a "drop zone" because you can drop groceries or the mail until you can put it away; some designers call it a "kid's nook" because that's where they can put their school clothes and books when they come home – and even do their homework if there's a desk. For other families, it's just the place to drop off muddy shoes so you don't trek dirt all through the house. For still others, many mud rooms just end up functioning as a catch-all for all of the family's miscellaneous things.

We’ve put together this list of our favorite house plans with mud rooms, as well as mud room features to make them the best they can be.

 

What is a Mud Room?

Sometimes included in a “utility room” or the “laundry room,” a mud room is an American term for the casual secondary entrance to the home.

They are typically small (but not usually cramped) and are reached through either the back door or a side door, as through a garage. They offer storage for things like a shoe rack, coat rack, laundry basket, utility sink (or laundry facilities), and the like.

The name comes from the ability to remove muddy boots or wet coats without soiling the main living areas of a home.

The feature has been popular across American homes for decades, although their inclusion took a slight dip in the minimalist movement of the mid-1900s. Their popularity has steadily increased since, however, and many homes feature some variation on the space, even if it’s abbreviated, as in a hallway.

 

Most Important Features

If you're starting from scratch (or doing a design overhaul) here are the features you should consider including in your mud room.

• Seating

It’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to wiggle off a muddy boot if you don’t have anywhere to sit down. When designing a mud room, make sure you have somewhere to sit. It doesn’t have to be a built-in seating solution, but just take care to leave enough room for a bench or stool or two.

• Storage

To leave the muddy/soiled items in the mud room, you’ll need a great place to put them. Installing a shoe rack, coat hooks, and the like (as well as a shelf or two!) can help keep the chaos of the outside world out of the main living areas of your home.

• Durable Flooring

If you have carpet in a mud room, it will need to be cleaned constantly. Depending on the aesthetic you would like to achieve, ceramic tile, polished concrete, laminate flooring, or wooden floorboards will be significantly easier to clean over time.

 

10 Great House Plans with Mud Rooms

Interested in a home with a mud room already included in the design? Here are just ten of our favorite mud-room-equipped homes.

 

1)  Country Comfort

This cute country cottage with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and 2597 living square feet has a compact mud room area just off the garage’s entry point into the house. While the laundry room is just to the side of this entryway, there's an alcove immediately inside the door to the left with space for a set of lockers to keep things nice and organized when coming home.

If lockers don’t work for your family, however, the plan can easily be adjusted to include shelving, a shoe rack, or an open design so that the entry hall flows seamlessly into the utility area for ease of use.

 

2)  Contemporary Keeper with 3-Car Garage

This magnificent Contemporary Prairie style home truly is a sight to behold. Its standard floor plan comes with 2 bedrooms and 2.5 baths in 2593 square feet of living space. But if you choose to finish the unfinished daylight basement the plan comes with, you can add 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and another half bath, for a total of 4 bedrooms, 4 full bathrooms, and 2 half baths – along with an exercise room, rec room, billiards room with bar, and media room.

Featuring rich dealing on the windows and throughout the exterior, materials like clean stucco accented with rock and stone bring the home to life with an envious curb appeal. Not only that, but the house features a spacious mudroom. Located off the generous 3-car garage, the mud room has space for all laundry facilities, as well as an industrial sink, in an L-shape counter layout.

While there is plenty of room for storage within the mud room itself, should you need more space (or prefer a separate area for things like sports equipment), there's also a walk-in closet on the left side, adding just a bit more needed space.

 

3)  Farmhouse Style Plan with In-Law Suite

This magnificent country style home is a classic. It has farmhouse detailing (including a wrap-around porch that's perfect for rocking chairs) and 3437 finished square feet (6 bedrooms and 4 baths). Including the covered porches and garage, there's a total of 6,707 square feet of finished and unfinished space.

Some of that finished space is an in-law suite (perfect for visiting friends and family – or potential rental income) and one of our favorite mud rooms, a large room with with bench and clothes-hanging space that you can enter from the garage or in-law suite. The laundry room with sliding door is to the side, and it connects to small hallway coming off the screened-in porch. The hallway has a sliding door that opens to the kitchen breakfast area. The whole space – mudroom, laundry room, hallway with coat closet – acts as the perfect buffer between the inside and outside worlds.

 

4)  Luxury Home with Spectacular Views

This luxury Tuscan style stunner is an entertainer’s dream. The entry and receiving area flow through the formal dining room and a hallway to the open-plan Great Room and kitchen area, all of which are open to a huge veranda out back. The entire inside of the house is brightened by floor-to-ceiling windows around the staircase and sliding doors and tall windows along the back facing the veranda areas.

The unfinished walkout basement of the home has space, should you choose to finish it, for a movie theater, billiards room, full bar, media area, and two bedroom suites, one with a sitting room – all with access to covered verandas and a large patio – as well as hundreds of square feet of "cold" storage space. 

Our focus here, however, is the mud room, which serves as a great transition between the home’s 4-car garage bay and the rest of the house. It has lockers, or cubbies, and a bench on one side plus a counter with cabinetry on the other.

During bad weather, the room's proximity to the separate laundry room across the hall is a boon. Wet and muddy clothes can come in the mud room and go directly to the laundry to be washed and dried.

 

5)  Impressive French Manor

Your home truly is your castle with this elegant French manor home with plenty of room for the entire family.

Reminiscent of a chateau nestled away in the Loire Valley or Bordeaux, France – or perhaps in your memories of an enchanted forest and Beauty and the Beast – this 3080 living square feet manor home is simply captivating.

The Great Room has a vaulted timber-beam-accented ceiling, and there are separate areas for breakfast/informal meals and formal dining. The enormous private master bedroom suite has a 10-foot tray ceiling and direct access to the grilling porch, and the secondary bedrooms on the other side of the house share a jack-and-jill bathroom.

The mud room is tucked away on the left side of the house, connected to the 2-car garage on the ground floor and labeled the “Kid’s Nook.” It has room for coat hooks and a nice bench, as well as an adjacent coat closet and laundry room with sink as storage solutions. 

 

6)  Stunning Western Craftsman

This grand Western-style-living home boasts up to 4,900 living square feet (if you choose to finish the walkout basement) and offers amenities above and beyond most luxury standards.

From the foyer, you step into the large vaulted Great Room with welcoming stone fireplace. You can look out onto the huge covered deck from which sunlight brightens the whole home. Next is the open-concept kitchen with a large island and access to the rear patio and the dining area, which opens to the covered deck on one side and the rear patio on the other. Features in the walkout basement, if you choose to finish it according to the designer's suggested floor plan would include a study, a bar, two bedrooms with walk-in closets, two bathrooms, a craft room, and a recreation room, which adds 2040 square feet of conditioned living space and 892 square feet of unfinished "cold" storage space.

All of this, plus a large mud room just off the massive 3-car garage. There is room to store clothing and boots in wall-mounted and base cabinets (as well as skis and the like ... it is a mountain home after all!) in addition to laundry facilities.

 

7)  Traditional Home with Peninsula/Eating Bar

This traditional home in the formal Colonial style is nonetheless designed with the modern family in mind, as its open and split-bedroom floor plan gives plenty of space and privacy for a growing family. It also lives bigger than it may seem at first glance with its 10-foot-high tray ceiling in the Great Room family area and vaulted ceiling in the master bedroom. The house has plenty of room for storage and features an "entry" mud room on its left side.

Upon entering the mud room from the garage, you'll see a built-in counter and room for a shoe rack or cabinets beneath. There's also a coat closet just around the corner on the right. The laundry room on the left offers overflow space and a place to put wet and soiled clothes during bad weather.

 

8)  Cute Farmhouse with Vaulted Ceilings

Enjoy the country-living feel of this Farmhouse style home with a charming Rustic-Contemporary treatment. While the outside of this particular home is cute, the interior is downright charming with plenty of space, as you can see from the floor plan, including three bedrooms (with a master bedroom suite that has his and her walk-in closets and his and her split sink vanities), a large Great Room entertaining space with vaulted ceiling, and a flexible office / play room / guest room / getaway room.

The mud room is a long hallway that functions as a perfect transition between the garage and the rest of the house and can provide lots of coat-hook hanging space along the wall. It has room for lockers just inside from the garage, and the nearby laundry room offers plenty of more storage space and a convenient drop-off for wet clothing during inclement weather.

 

9) Modern Stunner

This modern marvel has luxurious details that raise the bar for today's home design. Huge panes of glass, soaring ceiling heights, and bold lines are just the start of what makes this 5-bedroom, 5.5-bath home so stunning.

The main living area open floor plan is designed to create open yet defined spaces. The dining area looks out to the front; the kitchen provides space for cooking and entertaining as well. The large kitchen island includes seating for informal meals or social entertaining, and the walk-in pantry provides storage space. The craft space is perfect for projects of all kinds. For work from home or when quiet time is needed, there's an office right off the master suite.

Of course, there's also the mudroom, which that leads to / from the attached 3-car garage. It is a generous space and has a separate designated storage room for holding coats and other outerwear, shoes, boots, and anything else that needs to come in or out on a regular basis.

Upstairs are a loft space; four bedrooms, including a studio space that has a living/dining area, laundry room, and small kitchen; and two sundecks.

 

10) Chic Mid-Century Modern with High Ceilings

The famous architect Le Corbusier describes “the house” as a highly functional machine that breathes, lights up, shades, protects, and provides for its occupants. Such a description clearly applies to this sleek Modern style home with flat roofs.

The house mimics the mesmerizing style of the great Frank Lloyd Wright and is perfect for families, young couples, and retirees alike. It features a mudroom (red oval in the floor plan) perfect for stomping off that desert dust before entering the main house. It's just off the garage rear door to the right and features a long bench with coat hooks on one side and a desk and built-in unit of cabinets and shelving on the other side.

 

Mud Rooms are an essential part of any home – especially these days after they have been so well established. If you have any questions about these plans or would like to find out more about others, please do not hesitate to contact us today.