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Front Yard Curb Appeal
Front Yard Curb Appeal Building Tips
Front yard curb appeal tops the list when it comes to enticing potential buyers to check out your home! If you want potential homebuyers to actually stop and pick up a flyer about your house, rather than slowly rolling on by in their cars, front yard curb appeal is where it’s at!
The first very important trick with front yard curb appeal is to realize that flowers and grass are high-maintenance, whereas tree, shrubs and landscaping materials are low-maintenance. Flowers are a wondferful feature but won’t always give your front yard curb appeal. Why? Because they’re not continuously in bloom. Try for a landscape that has year around beauty.
Different types of flowers bloom at different times throughout the spring and summer. For example, if you plant daylilies, they won’t bloom until June or July--which gives you zero front yard curb appeal in March or April, when you’re most likely to put your house on the market.
Plus, flowers have to be watered. And so does grass. Which makes creating front yard curb appeal a headache. Rather, you want to create enticing front yard curb appeal by exerting the least amount of effort necessary. That will give you time to keep your house spotless!
The best bet for front yard curb appeal is ornamental plants--the key word being ornamental. Japanese red maples are always a good bet for an easy, fast way to create front yard curb appeal: they’re colorful, they’re small enough that they won’t obstruct the view, they won’t kill grass with giant areas of shade, and they won’t shed a ton of leaves.
Also, increasing the amount of space in your front yard that features landscape gravel or mulch will also maximize your curb appeal--not to mention time for you to tend to other home selling details!
When creating front yard curb appeal with landscape rocks and mulch, you’ll want to incorporate flowing, curved lines, rather than harsh, straight lines. Straight lines appear harsh and rigid, offering little front yard curb appeal. On the other hand, curved lines lend ample front yard curb appeal by creating depth and exuding a relaxed sense of ease.
Curved lines can gently lead the eye to your front yard’s best feature--such as that Japanese red maple! They can also break up a rectangular front yard and make a small front yard appear larger by suggesting that more lies beyond.
Within your landscape bed, you can place larger rocks and shrubs for visual appeal. If you like, you can also incorporate large flower pots and plant annuals in them; petunias are an easy choice that will provide bright, eye-catching color from spring through early fall.
Another trick to make your front yard appear more attractive involves using diagonal lines. For example, instead of placing your landscape bed parallel to the street, place them so they form trianges with the sidewalk and entry walkway. Use low plantings and the illusion will be like having the walkway appear to flair out -- a welcoming touch. And for the grass left in your front yard, have a definitive cut or hard edging where it meets the mulch or ground cover.
These curb appeal tricks will give your front yard an almost Zen quality that’s hard for potential homebuyers to resist!
