Curb appeal isn’t just for when you’re readying to sell your home.
Curb appeal is a lifelong endeavor — a way of weaving your personality into your yard’s landscape and onto your home’s facade, and there are plenty of ways that you can infuse your personality into your outdoor areas that are vivid, exciting, and seasonal!
Haven’t we all had this experience? You’re traveling through a neighborhood when you’re suddenly struck by it: A seemingly perfectly curated home. Its shrubbery is immaculate. Its lawn cut so precisely you could set your watch to it. The home’s exterior decor designed and arranged so tastefully you could swear that there must’ve just been a Better Homes and Gardens photo shoot taken there. How did they do it? How is it all so perfect? And how come your house never looks like that? Sure, we don’t want to covet thy neighbor’s home, but…sometimes we might. Just a little. Cause after all, we’re only human, right? But are they?
Here’s the thing: They are! And whatever it is that you love about the way they’ve curated their front yard and the facade of their home is absolutely achievable for your own. What they’ve done is that they’ve taken the time to consider how they want their home’s curb appeal to reflect their personality, their values, and their loves, and have carefully placed those details into a landscape design that clearly communicates those ideas. And they’ve probably had a little help along the way.
So that’s exactly what we’d like to do for you, too. Give you a few simple suggestions as to how you can bring your personality to life through your home’s curb appeal this fall, or all year long.
Keep it clean (lawn, gutters, and other outdoor areas)
This seems like an obvious one, but the devil is in the details. By the time autumn comes around, we’ve been lucky enough in the Pacific Northwest to have had a lush, bloom-filled spring and summer, and while the months of fall bring their own natural beauty, they also bring with them a series of chores that, while perhaps a nuisance, play a critical part in creating the ideal curb appeal.
Keep your lawn cut, make sure the leaves and other debris are raked, and keep those pesky gutters clear. Ignoring to do so will give your home an untidy and uncared for look, which is precisely what you’re not going for. Also make sure that you’re keeping your plants and shrubbery properly trimmed as they transition to dormancy. This is not only good for aesthetics but is important for the plant’s longevity.
Fall flowers bring curb appeal powers!
Whether they’re in raised beds, pots, or properly hung window boxes, flowering autumn plants will give your home color, texture, and an air of vibrancy that will make your home’s curb appeal burst with personality.
Think about fall-friendly varieties like lamb’s ear, sage, winter cabbage, and more. There are a plethora of flowers to choose from, so we encourage you to think about how you can showcase a mixture of different heights, widths, and fall colors that complement the season just as much as they do your home!
The doorway to your soul (is in the eye of the beholder). Your home’s front door is literally any visitor’s entryway to understanding how you and your family live their lives. Why not infuse it with the same personality and sensibilities they’ll be experiencing once they step inside?
Not only can you give your front door some much-needed seasonal life with a new coat of paint, but the color you choose will most assuredly give your home’s facade an entirely new look and feel.
Now, while giving your door a new coat of paint is hardly something to be afraid of, we do encourage you to give factors some consideration before you break out the brush.
Check the weather to make sure that you’ll have a dry, warm weekend, and spend some time in the paint store choosing a range of colors to decide from. Bring the paint swatches home and tape them to your door to see if they complement your home’s color and the look that you’re ultimately going for. Your door might seem like a small component to your overall curb appeal, but it’s a focal point that will draw in the tell visitors a great deal about who you are!
Light up your life
There’s so much more to facade lighting than a simple porch light. Pendants, lanterns, and hanging lights are just a few of the options you can place on your front porch — in a variety of different ways and positions.
But why limit outdoor lighting to the porch? Driveways, walkways, and other wayfinding areas are the perfect places to combine the practicality of increasing visibility with the dramatic effect that well-placed lighting can bring.
The impact of well-placed lighting needn’t stop there. Lights placed in or around garden beds, those that illuminate trees, and strategically positioned lights across the landscape itself can make the transition from day into night one that takes your yard from average to exceptionally stylish.
Embrace the season
There’s no simpler way of embracing the changes in the season through your landscape design than by having special decor that reflects the season. All you need is a vision, the right materials, and, of course, a place to store any non-perishable decorations you plan to use for the next few years.
Items like pumpkins, hay bales, corn stalks, wagons, garlands, and other seasonally-specific things are just some of the things you can use to give your yard some autumn-rich personality.
Search online resources like Pinterest, home decor and architectural sites, of course, the advice of landscape designers such as ourselves to kickstart your seasonal inspiration!
Keep it subtle (or…don’t. Be yourself!)
Here’s possibly the best advice we can give you about how you can give your home genuine curb appeal: Follow your heart. Be yourself in all the choices that you make. Don’t create a design based upon what you think others might like, do what encapsulates your dreams of what your yard can be.
Take the time to understand what you want out of your yard. Sketch it out. Consider the materials. Think about how to tell the story. And bring in a team of experts like those at Greenhaven Landscapes, folks who have had nearly twenty five years of experience in bringing inspiration great and small to life, no matter what the season.
You deserve to be proud of your yard. You deserve to have a trustworthy team by your side to ensure you can be. So why wait? The curbside appeal of your dreams awaits!