6 Important Tips For Better Curb Appeal

Curb appeal isn’t just important when you’re trying to sell your house; it also plays a critical role in what your neighbors, family, and friends think when they come to visit. Fortunately, creating curb appeal isn’t overly complicated, and it shouldn’t be expensive either.

Curb appeal is relatively consistent among individuals, almost all of us will like most designs, but if you go too ‘out there’ you can end up with a landscape that leaves people confused. Stick to the basics and keep your backyard for your more creative designs.

Keep the Front Clean and Simple

The biggest curb appeal killer is a front yard that is messy, dirty and overly complicated. Make sure that your yard is cleaned just as well as you would clean your house, get rid of any leaves and ensure that borders are well defined and not overgrown.

When you’re designing a front yard prioritize a clean and simple design, with well-defined borders between the grass, shrubs and any plants or flowers. This helps to create a ‘clean’ and defined look that almost everybody will love.

Overcomplicating your designs and trying to integrate different elements together can leave you with something that looks poorly thought through.

Ensure that the Grass is Cut

Of course, most front lawns have a tremendous amount of grass, and it has a significant impact on your overall curb appeal, in fact, it might be the most significant factor. Most houses have grass lawns, and that makes it so easy to compare homes, therefore, ensure that your grass is regularly cut.

Depending on the area which you live you might need to cut the lawn as often as once per week, or as little as once every other week. Regardless, it’s good advice to cut your grass a few days before it starts to look like it needs to be cut.

Doing this will ensure that your lawn is continuously looked freshly cut, even though you are only cutting it slightly more frequently than others.

Make Your Grass Greener

We all want the most vibrant green grass possible, and there is little worse than a dull green, yellow lawn that makes the entire house look like it’s not cared for. Unfortunately, depending on where you live, this vibrant green might be impossible with the soil in your area.

To help your grass to grow better and keep a bight green color, you should water it regularly using sprinklers that will maintain a strict schedule to keep your lawn well fed.

If you find that your grass is still relatively dull compared to others in your area, you might consider a fertilizer that can help to balance the levels in the turf, promoting better growth.

Use Shrubs to Vary Height

Amateurs often don’t recognize the importance that dimensions like height can play in a garden. Without any varying height, your lawn is going to come up to the house and cause a colossal contrast which isn’t appealing.

Instead, use tall shrubs next to the house to soften the change in height and consider using short shrubs closer to the curb, but still behind the grass. This placement creates a gentle gradient up to the house which has a more natural look that even appears thoughtful.

Resist Overdoing It

A lot of homeowners get grand ideas for their front lawns and decide to go all out, planting a vast number of plants, all mixed in an odd fashion. In most circumstances, it’s best to keep things simple to avoid ‘overdoing it’ and ending up with a busy garden.

Prioritize Color Matches

Perhaps the most impactful tip for new landscapers is to prioritize color matches between all of the elements in your garden. If you mix too many colors, you can create a mishmash that looks wild and overgrown, but just a few well-matched colors can look beautiful.

Presuming that the majority of your garden is a deep green you can use colors like white, orange and red to add splashes of color without overpowering the lawn.

Using color sparingly can often create a design that looks more beautiful overall than trying to segment parts of the front yard in different sections, each of which has multiple colors in it.