If you’re anything like most homeowners, you want to make your house look better from the road. The reasons for this are many. You might want to improve the appearance so that you feel better approaching it from your drive. Or, if you’re looking to sell, you need it to look better from the outside so that people will book viewings for the interiors. Like ugly dogs at the animal sanctuary, it’s hard to shift a bad-looking house.
Making your home look better on the outside isn’t difficult. You’d be surprised how a few small changes can lift the appearance of your entire house. Once you’ve done it, it can make a big difference in how you feel and what you get out of your home. Even your guests will notice the difference.
Take a look at these ideas for improving the exterior appearance of your home. None of it is difficult, especially if you employ the help of outside contractors. Just tell them what you want and get it done.
Replace Your Prebbledash With Nylon
Photo by Peter Fogden on Unsplash
We might as well start with a strange one: replacing pebbledash with nylon. Let’s deal with the pebbledash issue first. Pebbledash was a popular interwar exterior cladding material for homes in the UK. It seems as if somebody, somewhere, had a giant mountain of stones and needed somewhere to put them. Pebbledash became ubiquitous, especially on semi-detached properties.
The problem with pebbledash is that it looks terrible. And worse still, it has a habit of falling off in chunks, exposing the grey stones and concrete beneath the white paint. Intact pebbledash is bad enough. But after nearly 80 years, most houses with it have some kind of problem. It’s not great.
Replacing it with nylon cladding might sound a little strange. After all, who uses nylon on the side of buildings? But you’d be surprised how much better your home looks. Instead of just looking like another house on a run-down estate, your home will look like a developer just constructed it. If you don’t mind the “new” look, then nylon can make a massive difference.
Buyers like this kind of thing too. Most would prefer to live in a newly built home, but these properties tend to be boxy and small. Pebbledash homes, on the other hand, are often quite spacious. Many buyers would love a chance to grab a property that looks new, which also offers plenty of interior space and a traditional room layout. Despite what you might read on interior design blogs, not everybody is sold on the idea of “open plan.”
Replace Your Windows And Doors With Modern Alternatives
Cladding aside, the windows and doors of your home contribute significantly to its overall aesthetic. It’s one of the first things that people see as they approach your home.
It’s tricky to change these elements of your property. Windows and doors are often in keeping with the surrounding building and are difficult to replace with generic UPVC products. You don’t just want to whack in any old double-glazing and hope that it fits the theme of your home. It probably won’t.
UPVC windows and doors have come on a long way in the last ten years. A lot of homeowners falsely believe that they have a choice between white plastic and white plastic, but that’s not the case at all. As UPVC door installers will tell you, there is now an enormous variety of products from which to choose.
Suppose, for instance, you own a traditional Georgian property with old-style sash windows. You would think that replacing those would be impossible. But, fortunately, for you, you’re wrong. You can buy wood-effect, UPVC sash windows that not only replicate the original but hold the heat in your home better too,
You can get all kinds of colours of UPVC too, ranging from black to olive to red in some instances. Of course, white, cream, grey and every shade of off-white imaginable is also available.
Replacing your doors and windows as well as your pebbledash with nylon can make a massive difference to the external appearance of your home. It’s all easy too: contractors will do it for you. There’s no need to climb ladders or watch countless YouTube tutorials on the subject.
Swap The Roof Tiles For Slate
The average roof tiles in the UK are made of a cheap combination of ceramic and concrete. These tiles were exceptionally cheap to manufacture, especially as the country’s housing needs exploded in the 1950s and 1960s following a boom in the population.
These tiles, however, have a nasty habit of looking terrible. Sure, they do the job well. But they’re a little bit like whale skin, attracting enormous barnacles (in the form of moss and mould) and generally looking awful.
Slate is one possible solution. A new slate roof can take your house from looking a little under par to something stunning. Even if your home is identical in every other respect to the other properties on your street, slate can have a marked impact and also give it character. The shimmering blue-grey has a calming effect on the eyes and looks fabulous in the rain.
Slate is one of the most costly roofing types available. The reason for this is that artisans make slate tiles by hand, literally cutting the slate rock at regular intervals.
Use Plants And Landscape
We’ve all been to homes that don’t make good use of plants and landscaping at the front. To be fair, some can’t. Their proximity to major roads makes it impossible for them to do any more than line up a few plant pots along the window sill.
But most of us have some kind of space at the front of our homes that we can use to make them look better (unless you’re living in a block of flats).
Designers have been using plants to make homes look better for centuries. The aristocrats of old lined their driveways with oak and ash to help add to the grandeur of their residences.
You might not have space for this kind of opulence, but that’s okay. You can easily make your home more appealing from the road by adding bay trees in pots, hanging baskets, and a landscaped driveway.
The problem with most UK homes is that the driveway at the front is the only consideration. You need a place you can put your car, and that’s fair enough. But there are ways to make the space around the vehicle more inviting and colourful. You can dig up sections of your garden if you want, but it’s almost always cheaper and better to head on down to your local garden centre and pick up some potted plants. It just makes it easier. (If you live in a high crime area, you’ll want to plant your plants to stop people from running off with them).
Weed Your Driveway And Give It A Good Scrub
While we’re on the topic of your driveway, there’s a good chance that it doesn’t look as good as the day that you laid it. Driveways have a habit of falling victim to the elements, becoming riddled with weeds, algae, moss and other organic matter.
Sorting out a driveway as very easy. Usually, all you need is a combination of a good brush and a pressure washer. Again, you don’t have to do this yourself: you can hire somebody to do it for you. If your driveway looks a little dull right now, you’ll be amazed at how much you can brighten it up.
Thanks for the tips!