The 10 Best Ways to Improve Your Home’s Curb Appeal

Even if you aren’t interested in selling anytime soon, curb appeal plays a significant role in your home-owning experience. Walking up to your house at the end of a long day should feel welcoming, inviting and peaceful. You should feel at home. It’s hard to feel a sense of peace if you’re thinking about the leaky gutter, uneven walkway and fading paint job.

If you are preparing to put your home on the market, arguably the most important factor in your home’s first impression is curb appeal. Your home’s exterior appearance can immediately intrigue future buyers or turn them off from the sale altogether. Since curb appeal plays such a vital role, if you’re planning to sell, you’ll want to know how to add value to your home now.

Investing the time and money into your home’s curb appeal will increase the value of your home in the future and improve the quality of your home-owning experience now. Every home has unique needs and updates, but here some methods on how to improve your house’s curb appeal.

1. Do a Deep Clean

Before making any investments or adjustments to the exterior of your home, take the time to deep clean what you already have. You shouldn’t add a new layer of paint or resurface the roof until you’ve cleaned away the dirt, grime and debris from your house.

Cleaning alone could add anywhere between $10,000 to $15,000 to the sale price of some homes, according to the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR).

The best place to start cutting away at years of accumulated dirt buildup on your house is with a pressure washer. However, a power washer could damage certain finishes, like the protective seal on your garage door.

The easiest way to clean the exterior of your house is to hire a company to do all the proper detailing work your home deserves. Shoreline painting proudly offers exterior home maintenance services to accomplish this.

Giving your home exterior a proper washing will illuminate which aspects of your home need revamping and which parts just needed a good cleaning.

2. Beautify Your Home With Exterior Painting

Once you cleaned the outside, take the time to consider a new exterior paint job.

Nothing spruces up a home or completely alters its appearance like a fresh coat of paint. You can improve the coloring of a weathered paint or change the facade entirely with a new color. Painting the exterior of your house does add value — according to Zillow’s 2018 survey, just painting the door a charcoal, smoky gray or jet black added an average $of 6,271 to the asking price. On the other hand, painting the exterior yellow decreased the asking price by an average of $3,408.

If you’re looking for the most value, pick neutral colors. Selecting too vibrant of a tone will hurt the resale value if you don’t find the exact person who would want a house in a flashy color. When you choose muted, neutral colors, such as white or off-white, they appeal to the widest variety of buyers, mainly because they can envision the home as a canvas they can customize to make their own.

Every shade of paint gives you different options for how to feel when you enter your home. Talk with the professionals at Shoreline Painting to get expert advice on how to customize the look of your home for the highest return on investment.

3. Consider Your Landscaping

The landscaping of a home tells a story about its occupants. Well-manicured lawns and freshly trimmed shrubs tell neighbors and potential buyers that you keep the house in immaculate shape because you care about maintaining the quality of your home.

Clean, well-kept greenery frames your home’s architecture. Overgrown, browning plants will be the viewer’s focus and pull their eyes away from your home’s beautiful details. Let the landscaping guide the eye towards the most interesting parts of your house, like leading lines in a painting.

Millennial buyers show particular interest in the quality of outdoor spaces. This generation tends to care more about communal outdoor spaces than previous generations who preferred features such as pools. Simple tweaks to the quality of your landscaping could increase the home’s value by 5%. NAR’s Research Department found that homeowners recouped 100% of the cost of professional landscaping maintenance when selling a home in 2018.

If you do not currently have a landscaping plan, contact a local landscape architect and talk about options that will look best for your particular house and climate. Make sure you discuss routine care. Future homeowners will want something that stays looking good with minimal maintenance.

If you already have landscaping, making sure your plants are pruned and trimmed properly to show you take the time to maintain your property. Have you lawn cut regularly to maintain an orderly, well-kept appearance.

4. Focus on the Front Door

Your front entrance demonstrates the welcoming nature of your home. Make this area pop with a fresh coat of professional paint. While brash colors could hurt your home’s resale value when applied to the full exterior, accent doors are in vogue. This is one of many examples where painting your home does add value. Make a statement with a bright or contrasting color. For more ideas on how to pick the right color and paint type for your door and to ensure that professionals paint your home with the proper care, contact Shoreline Painting.

While paint can transform a door, if the material sustained damage or the door is too outdated, you might need to replace the door to add value to a modern house. Doors come in many different styles, so ask a professional what door works best for your home. Once installed, get a professional paint job with Shoreline Painting to ensure the door works best with your current exterior.

If you don’t want to replace the whole door, just changing out some of the door’s hardware can make the perfect small adjustment you need to improve the door’s look. Update the handle, hinges or house number to replace worn, rusted materials or improve the outdated style.

You’d be surprised how changing just one aspect of your home’s front door can completely change your home’s look.

5. Expand the Porch

Nothing helps contribute to the welcoming nature of a house like a large, wraparound porch with some rocking chairs and lemonade. However, you don’t need a large porch to add that welcoming factor to your home. Expanding the porch you do have by any measure will add to the value and visual appeal of the house.

First, deep clean the porch. Doing so will help you identify problem spots, such as cracked cement or rotted wood. Once cleaned and examined, set up the porch as nicely as you can. Get out your outdoor chairs and set up your tables.

Now take a step back and examine what you have.

What is missing?

If you take a look and think it could be bigger or differently shaped, contact a contractor to make adjustments. If you think the seating could stand some updating, invest in upscale outdoor furniture. Bench swings make excellent additions to outdoor porches. Buy some planters and arrange them nicely on the porch to bring a splash of color to the area. When you finish, you will have a more beautiful exterior, and prospective buyers can envision this relaxing spot as a place to make some spring and summertime memories with their loved ones.

6. Repair Your Pathways

The exterior of your home consists of more than the facade of your house. It also includes the driveway and walkway up to your front door. Cracks and uneven stonework are unattractive — and they could be dangerous. A poorly placed foot could end in a twisted or broken ankle.

Use a discerning eye to examine your entire trip from the sidewalk to your front door. Make sure your pathways are even and free from cracks. Check for spots where grass or moss peeks through. See if chipped rock or pavement sits on the ground. After you’ve examined for obvious defects, you can use a power washer here as well — both on the driveway and walkway. Once the surfaces dry, do your inspection again. Did cleaning solve the moss problems? Did it dislodge new chipped rock? Are you seeing new cracks that were previously filled by overgrown weeds?

Whether you want to fix minor problems or completely redo your walkway or driveway, contact a contractor to redesign your path or repave your driveway.

7. Think About Your Lighting

Increasing curb appeal is not just a daytime project. Adding exterior lighting can increase curb appeal on a classic home. Uplighting highlights the interesting architectural features of your home or can accentuate trees or shrubs leading up to your front door. It gives you a dramatic way to improve your nightly curb appeal while keeping your loved ones safe from a rolled ankle. If you have a good relationship with your neighbors, it could even deter robberies since well-lit streets are generally safer.

Before investing in uplighting, try adding individual solar lights along the walkway. This small change will give you an idea of what you should look for in your permanent uplighting.

You could also consider adding or changing out light fixtures by your front door. Adding a modern or antique-looking lamp beside your door will help you find your keys at night and add a welcoming touch to your facade.

8. Let in the Light With New Windows

Windows can improve your experience both inside and outside your home. Windows give you access to increased natural lighting on the inside, which can improve your general mood, especially during winter months. On the outside, windows can alter the appearance of the home by drawing attention towards certain architectural features.

Before you start considering replacement, make sure the inside and outside of all your home’s windows are clean. You may be surprised what a difference a clean, streak-free window will make to the exterior of your home.

Once your windows are spotless, stand outside your home and evaluate where your facade could benefit from a more exciting window design. Before you get started, explore the wide variety of windows available for your next home improvement project.

Working with heavy glass is dangerous — not to mention an expensive mistake if dropped or cracked — so always rely on a trusted professional to handle your window upgrades.

9. Modernize the Garage Door

Recently, the variety of garage door styles has increased to offer multiple options to complement the style of your home. A shift in your garage door’s styling makes a big difference to your home’s design since it likely takes up a large portion of your home’s outdoor surface area. A modern garage door is a great way to add value to a modern house.

Selecting which style works best with your home takes time and expertise. Do extensive research and then schedule a consultation with an industry professional.

If your home doesn’t need a brand new garage door, but your current door could use some sprucing up, a professional paint job could have just as big an impact as a brand new door.
Shoreline Painting offers more than just a new coat of paint. To further your garage’s energy efficiency, safety and beauty, Shoreline Painting’s garage floor coating service leaves your floor with a durable, moisture-resistant finish that makes your floor shine. When the door opens, the new finish will impress your potential buyers during their walk-through tour.

10. Compare Your Home Against Your Neighbors’

Once you’ve made the needed adjustments and finished your outdoor projects, look at your completed home and compare it to your neighboring homes.

Do they have features you don’t? Does something about your home stand out? If so, does it stand out in a good way or a bad way?

Prospective buyers taking a look at your home will compare your house to others in the neighborhood. You want your home to look just as nice as your neighbors, but you don’t want to do upgrades that will give you a poor return on your investment or raise the asking price beyond what buyers are willing to pay. If the buyers don’t value the features enough to spend the extra money, other homes will look like a better deal than yours.

It’s a difficult line to walk between making home improvements with a high return on investment and dumping money into a project that potential buyers ultimately will not value.

Unsure Where to Start? Ask the Professionals

As homeowners, we sometimes become used to certain defects that immediately stand out to fresh eyes, such as a faded coat of paint.

Reach out to Shoreline Painting to get our opinion on how fresh paint could transform the exterior of your home. Our fresh perspective and industry knowledge will unlock options and colors you may have never before considered. When done properly, painting your house will increase its value, so trust the professionals to get the job done right.

Explore your home’s potential by contacting Shoreline Painting today. Let us change the way you and potential buyers see your home.