Homeowners want to boost their curb appeal for many reasons. One of the most common is the fact that curb appeal is helpful in the real estate market. When a home looks attractive and well-kept from the outside, it brings more buyers in the door for open houses and tours. With more interest, you’re more likely to get an offer, or even several.
Other homeowners are ready to update their home’s look. Maybe it’s been a while since you’ve shown your property some love. Or perhaps you want a home that will impress your guests and rival some of the others in your neighborhood. Your house is something to take pride in, and making a few renovations now and then is one way to give it the care it deserves.
Whether you’re ready to sell soon or are looking forward to enjoying many more years in your home, boosting your curb appeal offers many benefits. So let’s talk about some of the high-impact renovations that will make your home’s exterior look its best.
6 Tips to Boost Curb Appeal
Upgrading your home’s exterior has so many possibilities. A few quick updates can improve your home’s appearance on a tight budget, while some more extensive projects can impress your guests and make you appreciate your house every time you come home.
Here’s how to improve curb appeal with a few simple tips.
1. Do Some Landscaping
Landscaping can be a low-cost way to make your home look more put together. Mowing the grass, trimming the hedges and laying a fresh bed of mulch may be all you need to spruce up your front lawn. Even putting in a few lights to illuminate some of your existing plants can give your yard a more sophisticated look. If you’re in the market for a magazine-worthy front lawn, you can hire a professional landscaper. They’ll design an attractive layout, plant some new greenery and decorative features and ensure your property looks perfectly manicured.
Landscaping can increase a home’s value by 5.5 to 12.7%, depending on the type of landscaping involved.
2. Install a New Garage Door
Putting in a new garage door is one of our favorite ways to boost curb appeal. If it faces the street, your garage door takes up a large portion of your façade. And since it’s usually a different color from your primary siding or paint color, it acts as a strong focal point. A new overhead door can make your whole home look brand-new. It can also offer benefits outside of aesthetics, such as increased security.
If you haven’t shopped for garage doors in a while, you’ll soon notice how many styles and colors there are to choose from. Between traditional carriage house doors, classic sectional doors and sleek modern doors like glass garage doors, there’s a style to fit every home. Wood or faux-wood doors can give your home a warm, inviting charm. Steel doors can provide a contemporary or traditional look, depending on the design. To see everything a new garage door can do for your home, visit our Door Imagination System and picture how some of our models will look on your home. You also have the option of adding insulation, which can be extremely beneficial in colder weather.
Another fun way to improve your garage is to add a retractable garage door screen, like the one we offer from Lifestyle. This upgrade is beneficial for homeowners who use their garage as a living space. It turns your garage into a screened-in porch, so you and your family can enjoy some fresh air. You can set up some porch furniture for curb appeal, so your garage looks its best whether you keep the door open or closed.
3. Give Your New Garage Door a Complementary Entry Door
While you’re upgrading your garage, why not get a new front door, too? When you buy the two together, you can select complementary styles and colors that will give your home’s architectural elements a uniform, attractive look. Updating your main entryway is a common suggestion to boost curb appeal because the front door is the home’s natural focal point. At BlackHawk Garage Door, we offer several attractive entry door collections designed to complement some of our most popular Clopay garage doors.
4. Replace Your Mailbox
One of the most straightforward curb appeal tips you can take care of over a weekend is to install a new mailbox. It’s often the first thing visitors see when they pull into your driveway. People coming for the first time usually look for your street address printed on the mailbox. Replacing a dented, rusty or chipped mailbox with a new one helps you make that first impression count. Also, consider dressing up the area around the post with some stones, flowering plants or other decorative features to make it look more welcoming.
5. Repave the Driveway
There’s nothing like fresh blacktop to make a home look new again. Newly paved asphalt has an unparalleled rich blackness that draws the eye toward it. You’ll also remove cracks and smooth out any ridges or dents that have formed over time. If it’s not quite time for a brand-new driveway — most last around 25 years with proper care — you can also consider seal coating or resurfacing.
Seal coating fills in cracks and restores the deep black color of faded pavement. Resurfacing adds a new top layer of asphalt to fill in shallow cracks and dips in the pavement.
6. Spruce up the Front Porch or Stoop
The area framing your front door is also crucial, as it’s highly visible from the street. If you’re in the market to sell your home, think about how many buyers will stand on your front porch as they’re waiting to tour the property. Refreshing your stoop is a crucial focus area when investing in curb appeal. There are also many ways to add charm and beauty to your grand entry. Some tips for improving curb appeal on your front porch include:
- Repaint or re-stain the deck and railing.
- Install new lights and other fixtures.
- Frame your door with two matching potted plants and add touches of green with hanging planters or flower boxes.
- Set up new outdoor furniture or replace the throw pillows.
- Update your house numbers.
- Place down a new welcome mat.
The ROI of Curb Appeal Improvements
Homeowners focused on curb appeal know that exterior renovations can boost their home’s resale value. Besides how to boost curb appeal, many people wonder how much they can recoup on their investments. Which investments offer the highest ROI? We recently reported on some of the highest-ROI renovations in the Minnesota and Wisconsin area, and all of them will make your home look more attractive. Here’s what you can expect from some of the most profitable exterior improvements.
- Garage door: Garage doors top the list with the highest curb appeal ROI. According to the national average, they recoup 94.5% of their value at resale.
- New siding: Replacing your siding is a logical runner-up because it covers the largest portion of your home. New siding can give your home a more vibrant color and remove any cracks or imperfections in the old siding. According to reports for our area, these projects return 68.5% of their value at resale.
- Stone veneer: A manufactured stone veneer offers the natural stone look at a much more affordable price. As such, it can boost curb appeal without requiring a significant upfront investment. At resale, you’ll recoup 67.7% of the cost.
- Entry door: Replacing your entry door is an excellent way to increase a garage door’s replacement value. When you do both at once and choose similar designs, they create a cohesive look, adding to the resale value over replacing the garage door alone.
- Windows: Windows are an excellent investment to attract buyers with curb appeal and entice the energy-conscious buyer, too, by giving your home better insulation. In our area, replacing all your windows will recoup an average of 65.4% of the total project cost.
Contact BlackHawk Garage Door to Boost Your Minnesota and Wisconsin Curb Appeal
Installing a new garage door is one of the best exterior renovation tips on our list because it can improve curb appeal and provide other valuable benefits. For example, installing an insulated garage door increases energy efficiency, saves you money and makes your garage more comfortable. A new garage door will operate smoothly and provide added convenience. Best of all, it makes your home look more inviting with attractive design elements.
Browse our selection of garage doors and contact BlackHawk Garage Door to schedule your renovation project, whether it includes a garage door, a front door or both.