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Boot rooms, which were traditional in grand English country houses during the 19th century, are practical, transitional spaces between the main house and garden, helping to keep the outside firmly out of doors. They provide places where you can store warm winter layers, children’s sports equipment and wicker baskets full of umbrellas and gloves, ready for every eventuality. They are perhaps at their most functional when used as a place to wrap up before bracing the outside elements, shed wet overcoats and muddy boots after a downpour or towel down the dog after a long country walk.
Preferably, the position of a boot room should be somewhere immediately next to an entrance of the house, to avoid getting mud on any carpeted areas, however not every house has the space for such a dedicated room. Multifunctional areas can be created to incorporate laundry and utility facilities and if space is limited, an entrance hall with hanging rails and a boot rack will provide valuable storage areas for outdoor wear. If you do have to combine utility and boot room areas, try to ensure that the washing machine is as far away from the back door as possible. This makes it more unlikely for clean dropped items to meet with muddy floors and footprints.
Like any other part of the house, the boot room should reflect your own personal taste. If it’s an extension of another room, for example a
traditional kitchen, maintaining the colour schemes and ironmongery on the cupboards throughout and matching the fabric of the curtains and the bench cushions can help to move away from a utilitarian feel. At Plain English, our style is very much a simple one, with long open shelving and cubby holes to hold all your important possessions, preferring the earthy neutral colours of the countryside as a colour palette.
A seating area placed near the door for the removal of dirty shoes is vital; the choice of a bespoke handmade bench can also offer extra storage space underneath. Hanging rails of various heights, catering to both adults and children, encourage tidy living and also offer a place to hang walking sticks and dog leads, as well as the usual jackets, coats and scarves.
Hardwearing and durable worktops made from stone or granite provide functional, multi-purpose areas that are easy to clean and maintain. For the green-fingered, these surfaces provide a place to store gardeners trugs and prepare freshly grown vegetables or plants, especially if there isn’t enough room to include a preparation table.
Floor materials should always be easy to clean and hardwearing, to cope with the purpose of the room and the amount of traffic that moves through it. Stone, slate or tiles usually make the most practical flooring, especially in a country setting. In the ‘Flower Room’ at our Plain English Suffolk kitchen showroom, we have traditional Suffolk pamments which are a perfect choice for a traditional country house kitchen.
Painted walls are a more practical choice over wallpaper, given the use of the room, and choosing a waterproof finish will make it easier to wipe down the walls, should any wet coats leave muddy residues. Boot rooms should be well illuminated with good, direct light, to help when doing tricky odd jobs. Large hanging glass lanterns emit plenty of light whilst maintaining a sense of country character if general light is lacking.
Decorating your boot room is the fun part: Adorn the walls with hooks that hang secateurs or other garden tools and add shelves to store plant pots, flower labels and seed catalogues. Old vintage linen flour sacks are perfect for cushions, bench seating and blinds, given the material’s resilience and natural, aged appearance; blue or red striped sacking can add extra, subtle pattern and colour. And if your family are a particularly messy and muddy one, you could simply have lovely hand painted wooden benches. |
