I can hear my mother shouting up the stairs, or as I walk out the door, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”. As someone that is charged with helping teams prepare for interviews, first impressions are among the very first things discussed. You have 2 minutes tops, with shrinking attention spans due to our digital universe it’s likely we have even less than that. After all a gold fish can hold their attention, gazing through their liquid oasis their world view warped by the curve of their glass bowl, for nine seconds. We humans clock in at 8. I love a happy goldfish, a prize for landing the ping pong ball atop a narrow rimmed jar, but this stat has me puckering my lips simulating a fish in the hopes that I can gain that second back. I’ll work on my attention span, but I can’t rely on others to be as shocked by this data as I am.

Which is why I feel perplexed about what to do with my own entry. If a person is subject to initial impressions which get imprinted on them for life, one can only imagine what happens when they enter your home. My current condo doesn’t offer much in terms of opportunity to surprise and delight. When you open the door – which is white in keeping with other units in the building, you are greeted by a wall that contains two other doors. It’s no house of mirrors. One is a coat closet, the other houses the washer and dryer. I am happy for both, but you can see the limitations that I am forced to contend with as it relates to this entry

Narrow with no where to go, I may not even get eight seconds. A splash of paint it’ll have to be. Doors, ceiling, casings and base all in the same hue? With small apartments and open concepts you have to delineate terminations. The base continues in a singular expanse from entry/hall to living room before flowing into the kitchen and meeting back up where it all began – in the entry. I love the look of a base in the same hue, but in high gloss, or a slightly darker pigment, still shining like a polished sports car preparing for a parade, but turning a corner and changing ones colors might not feel right in this situation. Safer to leave the base white, which begs the question should the casings remain white too.

I didn’t get into this game to play it safe, which leads me wanting to treat those doors as if they were side by side walls and adorn them with complimentary pieces of art. We humans crave symmetry so if I wanted to play it a tiny bit safe, in this smallest of spaces, with only a moment to make my mark on your psyche, I would find two pieces that offered balance. A door after all is a grand frame. I plan on capturing your attention with it, by giving life to my inanimate entry.