A home’s first impression always begins with its exterior. Whether you are preparing for a showing or welcoming guests, we’ve compiled a list below of some helpful upgrades that will help improve your curb appeal! We’ll be diving into each section of this list in more detail over the coming months, but for now here is an overview to get you started.
Photo by Omri D. Cohen
Find reference photos of homes with the ideal aesthetic you are looking for, and choose what you like, or research what current trends homebuyers are looking for in their landscaping- and add your own individual twist to it all, if you are inspired to do so!
Beginning with The Exterior of Your Home
Install Window Boxes / Hang a Wreath
Window boxes are an easy way to decorate your home, and if you have never planted a window box before, there are plenty of videos and tutorials online to help guide you. Further, wreaths aren’t just for holidays- you can find decorative wreaths to hang on or beside your front door that work even during the holiday’s off-seasons.
Paint the Front Door / Replace Your Storm Door
Putting some thought into the color of your front door - and how it can nicely fit in with the rest of your home’s look - can improve the whole picture dramatically! In addition, updating or replacing your storm door makes a big impact - as if it looks dingy, it could negatively affect how the entire exterior looks.
Add Colorful and Accessorized Seating to Your Porch
Mindfulness towards the color of porch decorations, such as warm and welcoming seating, can be an easy way to add life and energy to your home’s exterior.
Upgrade Your Garage Door
An attractive and clean-looking garage door is another feature to consider when looking to improve your home’s curb appeal that many often overlook.
Power Wash the Exterior
A routine cleaning of your home’s exterior, including the roof, does wonders for a home! A power washer can easily be rented online or from a nearby home improvement center - or perhaps you know someone who can lend you one?
Focusing on What is Often Overlooked
Replace / Coordinate Hardware, Railings, Gutters, and Downspouts
Upgrading your house numbers, the entrance door’s lockset, any wall-mounted mailboxes, and your light fixtures can upgrade a home’s entryway significantly- especially when they are mindfully coordinated, or painted in an accent or complimentary color to the rest of your home.
Further focusing your attention toward other small details of your home often overlooked by homeowners, such as the state of your railings, gutters, and downspouts can also improve a home’s first impression.
You may even find some creative and new ways to make such upgrades- such as considering moss covered house numbers made from pressure-treated plywood and sheet moss. There are many unique ways to add individuality to these little parts of your home that are often overlooked.
Adding/Renewing Paint Jobs, Siding, Shutters, and Accent Trim
An additional layer of appeal can easily come from adding wood, aluminum, vinyl, composite, or fiberglass shutters to your home, or a good-looking, but durable and low maintenance, trim- such as one made of PVC resins or polyurethane composite materials. Even more, maintaining such, along with your home’s siding and paint, can keep your house looking fresh and new even years after it's been built.
Consider Stone Features
Adding stone, or faux stone, to masonry details on your home is an easy and elegant way to improve your home.
Now Onto Landscaping/Your Garden
Renew Your Garden and Lawn
Having a manicured lawn and garden does wonders for how people view a home. Having thoughtfully arranged gardens, flower beds, trees, and even decorative stones and rocks can improve your home’s appeal- but further pruning growth, pulling weeds, and keeping up with your lawn’s care does even more.
Moreover, integrating a sloping walkway, or sloped areas around your home, into your landscaping can create a high-end look while using your lawn’s natural features.
And just as a thoughtfully arranged garden is beautiful, many people have found ways to incorporate their environment’s natural flora and fauna into their landscaping for a more naturalistic aesthetic- which may not only be easier to maintain, but it can also be better for the environment.
Outdoor Embellishments
More gorgeous garden decor to consider adding to your home are a grand gate, an archway, an arbor, a fence, fence panels, a prefab trellis, bird feeders, outdoor wall art, welcome mats, or benches- all which can further improve how appealing a lawn looks to newcomers. Potted or hanging plants can especially add natural beauty to your home by being on your front porch or stoop. Moss decorations, or moss wall art, and the addition of a water feature, such as a small fountain, pond, or birdbath, are modern ways that people have been beginning to add some natural, yet whimsical, appeal to their homes.
Create Symmetry
A symmetrical entranceway to your home, with the same garden beds, potted plants, and light fixtures, is a straightforward way to convey a romantic and clean aesthetic in order to create a picture-perfect home.
More Details to Consider
Install Outdoor Lights
Not only can you find many high-quality and budget friendly outdoor lights, but having such can also improve the safety and security of your home while creating curb appeal that continues working even into the night.
Decorate Your Mailbox
Your mailbox, though used for utility, can bring life into a home’s yard if it looks well-taken care of. You can even consider decorating it with vinyl decals, surrounding it with a beautifully arranged flower bed (again, there many tutorials and videos on how to arrange such online), or painting your mailbox to compliment your home’s exterior, or your yard’s aesthetic.
Maintain Your Walkway/Steps
Whether it is pouring new concrete steps, fixing up a stone path, or installing non-slip tile on your doorstep, these are all easy ways to heighten your home’s looks. Consider a colorful and contoured stone or tile walkway. Or, spice up a basic concrete walkway with a colored concrete resurfacer, maybe edging it with brick or stone. Many people have even found ways to involve patterns and designs into their stoop and porch floors.
Decorate Your Driveway
A fresh driveway paving, or resealing your driveway, along with weeding and cleaning it, can be a quick and positive addition to your home’s attractiveness. You may even consider integrating an individualized brick or stone design into your driveway to accessorize the often utilitarian look of a paved driveway. Lining your driveway with low-growing and lush greenery to soften a driveway’s harsh expanse.
In Conclusion
While this is a lot to consider in the end in order to upgrade your home’s curb appeal, take it one step at a time. Each upgrade you make, you will see a difference in your home’s aesthetic, and with patience and time, as good things take a while, your home will be transformed!
