Both ideas are great. I never store my shoes in bedroom wardrobes. I have an inbuilt wardrobe in the laundry and two sections are for shoe storage. As soon as everyone comes home the shoes are taken off and left in the laundry so they can aerate and then they get put away in their clear plastic labelled boxes or the hanging shoe shelves (for everyday shoes eg sneakers, work shoes etc.)

I'm not a shoe person so I don't have all that many, but they all get tossed (oops, I mean placed) into plastic tubs in the bottom of the wardrobe.....one tub for good shoes, one tub for casual shoes. As I said, I'm not really a shoe person........... :)

first thought is to widen the step at the front door, add a wall attached to the extended roof and create a more sheltered porch entrance with a bench seat and place for shoes under the bench and/or in a wall hung cabinet, the first pictures shows what i think is already there this one shows my suggestion a good carpenter should be able to build something out of timber to match the existing in a few days, not especially cheap, but well worth making something to match your gorgeous new home...a quicker, cheaper option would be to have a decorative shoe cabinet on the floor on the right hand side of the front door looking out...the cabinet would be visible from outside through the window next to the front door

Hi again watchedpoppy, most overhead cabinets are actually 300mm deep for ergonomic reasons; where they can sit 450mm above your bench. This allows a clear line of sight over the benchtop (and without hitting your head). In recent times manufacturers are making Undermount Range Hoods deeper and they need 450mm deep cabinets, but this is perfectly fine for a range hood cabinet because these deeper units need to be set around 700mm above your benchtop, and have a high cubic metre per minute m3/m extraction rate, where again ergonomically you still see your bench clearly and also do not hit your head on the cabinet. With this arrangement though we recommend that you do not step down the overhead cabinets next to the hood, but keep these also around 700mm above the benchtop like the photos here of a kitchen with a Falmec Undermount Hood that we made recently. Free standing Canopy hoods are set up with this same principal, have higher extraction rates and these usually protrude out even further at around 500mm deep. Hope this helps allay any concern. Regards; Malcolm