Have you ever noticed that when it comes to adding kerb appeal to the outside of a home, it tends to just get reduced to decoration? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but a fresh coat of paint, a nicer front door colour, some new pots by the entrance, maybe a neat little path leading up to the house, and that tends to be where the conversation stops. But you get the point here because often, this is usually what it gets narrowed to, and most advice online only focuses on the more decorative aspect than anything else.
But that’s only one part of it, and not even the biggest part half the time. Plenty of homes have nice colours and still don’t look especially polished from the street, which usually comes down to something less exciting but way more important, the materials doing all the visible heavy lifting. But that’s the thing, most people don’t even realise it’s actually the materials, everything else helps too, sure, but this is the primary thing here.
No, it’s the Materials that Set the Tone
Before anybody notices the sage green front door or the smart new lantern lights, the larger finishes have already made an impression. But what are these, anyway? Well, it’s the bigger pieces (be it in the focal point of the house or not, bigger just gets more attention. So, it could be the driveway, the garage door, the render, the fencing, the window frames; those are the things creating the backdrop. If that backdrop looks tired, cheap, or badly aged, the smaller decorative details are left trying to rescue something much bigger than they were meant to.
Ageing has a Huge Impact On First Impressions
Not all materials age in the same way, and that makes a massive difference outside. Some surfaces soften nicely over time and end up adding character (like brass when it comes to indoor fixtures and finished for example). But some just won’t work outside, like in a couple of years, they just get really grubby and worn.
A few good examples here would be faded uPVC, patchy concrete, tired cladding, discoloured fencing; those things change the whole mood of a property faster than people expect. There’s plenty of other examples you can hunt around for, but these are fragile (and some are different types of wood as well).
Large Exterior Features Carry More Visual Weight
Which was just mentioned above. Now, of course, your house itself carries the most visual weight out of everything in your property, but those other large features on or surrounding it do too. For example, you can only paint a garage door so many times before you need to buy a new one from Kay Garage Doors, something made of long-lasting materials, of course.
Again, paint is nice, but it doesn’t take away the fact that something is old, tired, or could just break soon enough and will need maintenance anyway. But overall here, big exterior elements take up more visual space, so naturally they have more influence over the final impression.
