If your home is ravishing inside but the exterior is more shabby than chic (as far as the neighbours are concerned), it’s akin to wearing a perfectly cut trouser suit with an old raincoat thrown on top. You’re falling at the final hurdle.
Significant changes such as new windows will always be costly, but you don’t have to spend a fortune to dial-up your home’s kerb appeal. There’s always a small improvement you can make, even if it’s just a tin of paint for the door.
Give the Joneses across the road a run for their money, but don’t wait until you’re ready to move before smartening up your exterior; do it for the simple pleasure of enjoying the new gate every time you arrive home. Having said that, if you are considering selling, kerb appeal is everything when it comes to luring in potential buyers. Psychologists say that people make a decision about a home within the first 40 seconds, so don’t spoil your chances before they get through the door.
Inigo’s Head of Sales, Tansy Butler-Biggs, says that “kerb appeal is a topic frequently discussed amongst Inigo’s potential buyers and they tend to have very specific preferences, ranging from complete privacy to sweeping driveways or wrap-around porches. Instead of second-guessing what a buyer might want, make sure your entrance is clean and free of clutter, then create an authentic exterior that brings you joy. Your home should reflect your personality and how you like to interact with the world. Imagine yourself as a brand new visitor to your own home, what changes would you make? And always enhance what you already have. If you have a period home with beautiful bones, look to restore rather than replace”.
Sometimes in life, it really is what’s on the outside that counts. Read on to make your home look the smartest on the street.
Greenery
As a bare minimum, clear your front yard or patio of weeds and keep any lawned areas looking neat, but don’t overlook the transformative power of plants for home exteriors. If you plan to be in your house for a number of years and you’re happy for a project to take time, you could train a series of non-invasive climbing vines up a trellis or wire on the outside of your home, or around an archway or fence into the garden. Try climbing roses, wisteria, jasmine or clematis. They’ll look and smell beautiful when they’re in flower and they can help to soften the edges of a bland, cube-like exterior.
If you only have a small space at the front, make it work harder and sacrifice your grass. Instead, plant a pretty border of flowers to give you a medley of colour and height, or cover the area that you have with gravel or chippings and plant up a group of pots or dolly tubs with flowering plants for a portable cutting garden, or herbs that you can use in the kitchen. It’s a satisfying way of using the space when you can bring a home-grown bounty indoors. If you need a bit of expert gardening advice to get you started, perhaps try an easily digestible short course from Create Academy, such as Arthur Parkinson’s guide to growing a garden in pots.
If you have no front garden or yard whatsoever, don’t despair – look to hanging baskets, pretty window boxes and smart potted shrubs to flank your front door. They will make all the difference.
Render and brickwork
For a subtle but worthwhile smarten-up, you could have your bricks repointed where needed. If you’ve inherited a previous owner’s pebbledash, you can have this professionally removed to uncover the brickwork beneath but first check whether you need planning permission. For a contemporary and clean look, you could also experiment with cladding (naturally, there are strict building regulations around this) or a smooth painted render.
Front doors
If your front door is a hideous uPVC relic from a previous owner then you might want to replace it entirely but chances are, you’re working with something salvageable.
If your door is solid wood, paint it a different colour and that alone will refresh the look of your house, giving you a real boost for a minimal spend. Try a bright shade such as bottle green or claret red, or make your door stand out with a glossy finish. To paint a door successfully, remove all fittings, sand down the existing paint with a medium grit paper, fill if necessary, clean the door and then prime it ready for painting. You can paint white upvc doors successfully too, so if the basic shape is good, you can improve it with a splash of colour. Always choose a specialist exterior paint or a semi-gloss paint that is mould-resistant.
Next, think about upgrading your door furniture with a new letterbox, a smart knocker, new handle and smart door number (the latter could be off-the-shelf, custom made by a metal worker in a design of your choice or even hand-painted by an artist).
Lighting
Your kerb appeal will be infinitely boosted by smart lighting placement. Plus, garden lights are useful for safety and locating house keys on icy winter nights. Consider lights on the boundary wall or beside the gate, lights guiding the way along the path through the front garden or strategically placed lights to highlight the architectural splendour of a particularly beautiful house exterior. There are few things more attractive than a really elegant lantern hanging inside a covered porch and if there’s no opportunity to use a lantern, a smart pair of lights either side of the front door will look just as good. Look to brands such as Jim Lawrence, Original BTC, Corston Architectural Detail and Pooky.
Windows
Windows are a minefield but we’ll cover some of the basics. If you have wooden window frames, you could have these restored and repainted to keep them looking their best (and to keep any potential wood rot and water penetration at bay). It is surprising how effective a contrasting colour on your windows can be – try an olive green for something particularly chic. If you have white uPVC window frames, these can be painted too to make them less of a sore thumb – just make sure they’re primed properly first. It won’t affect your immediate curb appeal but in an ideal world, single glazed windows would also be replaced with double or triple glazing to make them more energy efficient (and sound-proofed).
Next, think about details such as shutters. If you have them on the outside, make sure they’re hanging straight and not flaking and rotting. Sand and repaint your sills if needed and consider adding a window box if the mood takes you.
Don’t be the neighbour with the stained, drooping curtains or office-style vertical blinds. If privacy is needed, opt for a half shutter or a full plantation-style shutter to allow in light and keep prying eyes out, or even a pretty half curtain, which are easy to make or you could try East London Cloth. Otherwise, make sure visible curtains (and the windows themselves) are clean and tidy.
Fencing
Assuming you have space between your front door and the street, how you tackle a fence and gate depends on a few different variables. Do you live in a secure area? Is it imperative that your fence keeps people out and keeps pets and children in? Do you value privacy as a high priority? Then you’re going to want something more solid and difficult to scale or escape through. You can achieve this in a really smart looking way with wrought iron, stone-built or slim, slatted wooden fencing. As with the exterior of the house, you can soften the look of a fence by incorporating planting. You could also cultivate a very well-groomed and dense hedge with a pretty gate in the middle.
If the fence is tall and close to the house, you might suffer some loss of light in the front rooms, so that is worth taking into consideration. In rural areas or gardens without the potential of escaping pets or snooping neighbours, you can be creative with a less-dense or lower fence, allowing passers by to admire the garden you’ve created. Woven rush fences are particularly lovely, as are low hedges and stone walls or traditional iron estate fences.
Storage
Don’t go to the effort of heaving a couple of small potted trees over to your front door and forget to create garden storage, as clutter is the easiest way to spoil the lovely scene you’ve created.
First and foremost, if you have a wheelie bin (or multiple wheelie bins) living in your front garden, have a bin store built for them. This will be an aesthetic game-changer. You could buy a simple, ready-made structure for them and paint it however you wish, or have something custom made and then you can dictate every aspect of its design, including whether it has something charming such as a living roof. Likewise, if you need to store children’s toys or gardening tools and you have no space at the back (which would be preferable for security), keep space for a discreet locked shed or cupboard. Plant pots and watering cans look cohesive and less cluttered stored on shelves or stands and wellies by the door are best stored in a rack.
Paths and paving
An expensive but especially thrilling home update would be replacing a tired old driveway, weed-riddled garden path or worn steps up to a door with new paving stones, gravel, chippings, brickwork, or pretty patterned or coloured tiles. It’s especially effective to add a border to define the path. If there’s no budget to replace what’s already there, get rid of any weeds and moss, give it a good blast with a pressure washer and pepper the borders with some new plants.
