Top Upgrades To Help Boost Your Curb Appeal

ECOS Paints 08/27/2021
Top Upgrades To Help Boost Your Curb Appeal

When it comes to staging your home to sell, many people pay a lot of attention to the interior. We put old belongings into storage, paint the walls neutral colors, and keep the house immaculate to make a good impression on potential buyers. However, this first impression happens before anyone even touches the doorknob, when your driver first pulls up to the curb.

If you want buyers to be blown away before they even get out of their cars, check out our top upgrades to help boost curb appeal.

Polish Your Home’s Exterior

Clean House

As mentioned, one of our first instincts when it comes to readying our homes for potential buyers is to clean the house from top to bottom. The same should be true for the exterior. Before you begin adding improvements, make sure you polish what you already have by:

  • Getting rid of damaged lawn ornaments
  • Cleaning out your gutters
  • Refinishing your driveway
  • Polishing rusted house numbers
  • Sweeping the porch
  • Cleaning out cracks between cobblestones
  • Power washing the windows

Some tasks may need a little more elbow grease than others. For instance, if parts of the exterior need repair, these will need attention. Don’t allow loose shingles or crumbling steps to impact your home’s appearance.

Examine Your Roof

Roofs are incredibly expensive to replace, so you may be hesitant to do much work on them, especially considering you won’t be living in the house for much longer. But potential buyers may notice a sagging, damaged roof, and this could affect whether they’ll buy the house. This could also impact the price they’re willing to pay.

The best option is to have the roof examined for damage. If possible, see if you can have damaged parts patched without replacing the entire roof to keep your buyers and your bank account happy.

Repaint, Repaint, Repaint

A home may be in perfect working condition, but faded paint will make it appear old and dilapidated to potential buyers. Repainting the home will drastically improve its appearance and make it look newer and better maintained. Along with the exterior siding, consider touching up the paint on:

  • Shutters
  • Windowsills
  • Front door
  • Garage door
  • Front steps
  • Porch

Keep color combinations in mind when you go to repaint your home’s exterior. You don’t want the shutters or porch to clash with the house’s siding, and the color you paint your garage shouldn’t be at odds with the rest of your house. It often helps to paint the siding a neutral and the accents a brighter color, or vice versa.

Add Lighting

Even though most of your buyers will see your property during the day, there’s always a chance they may roll by during the night as well. For this scenario, consider adding ample outdoor lighting, such as porch lights and walkway lights to the house. Even during the daylight, this will give the house a more welcoming appearance.

Don’t Neglect Your Mailbox

Because it isn’t attached to the house, many people neglect the mailbox when it comes time to upgrade your home to boost its curb appeal. While a small detail, a dented or damaged mailbox will take away from your home’s overall aesthetic. Repair it when it breaks and repaint it if it gets scuffed.

Improve Your Landscaping

Look at Your Lawn

Your lawn is the stage upon which your house sits. Keeping it well-mowed will give potential buyers the sense that the entire property is well-maintained. Try applying grass feed every few weeks throughout the growing season and water the lawn if the weather is dry. And as the weather gets cooler, be sure to stay on top of raking leaves.

If your lawn has patches of dead grass, you may be tempted to overwater or fertilize them to get the grass to grow back more quickly. But this may simply damage the lawn more. The best solution is to have a lawn care professional examine the area and provide a solution for reseeding.

Prune Your Plants

Overgrown trees and bushes can also give the home an unsightly appearance. Worse, they can become unsafe. Branches that are growing too close to the house’s roof or windows can become a hazard in high winds, which may cause damage that will set you back if you’re trying to sell your house.

However, while you can typically trim bushes yourself, you should leave trees to the professionals. Because of their complex systems, pruning them incorrectly can damage them. Worse, pruning without the proper technique may injure you or those around you. It’s worth the investment to hire a service for these tasks.

Add Flowers

Color has a way of capturing our attention and remaining in our memory, so adding color to your lawn may help make a bigger impression on your potential buyers. Flowers are the perfect way to do this. Keep these things in mind if you’re adding flowers specifically to boost curb appeal:

  • How much time you have to tend to the flowers vs. how much care the flower variety requires
  • The size of the plant and the flower’s blooms
  • Whether the flowers will be visible from the street
  • What color the blooms will be and how that color will look next to the house
  • What time of year the flowers will peak vs. what time of year you will be showing the house

If planting a garden on the lawn is a challenge, you can always add hanging baskets, potted plants, or window flower beds for an easy-to-maintain pop of color.

Consider Your Hardscape

One’s landscape doesn’t just consist of the plants on their property. It also consists of the hardscape—the manmade, inorganic aspects that make up a garden. While costly to add, adding hardscaping will provide a level of prestige to your property while boosting curb appeal. Consider adding:

  • Garden paths
  • Stone steps
  • Patios and plazas
  • Fountains
  • Stone planters

This is significantly more time-consuming and skill-based than adding plants to one’s landscape. If you don’t have experience in hardscaping, it’s best to hire a professional to complete it.

Boosting your curb appeal is more possible than you think. Here at ECOS Paints, we have a wide selection of non-toxic* paints that are sure to freshen up your home’s exterior for the buyers to come.

*Non-toxic - Conforms to ASTM-D4236, specifically concerning oral toxicity, skin irritation and respiratory effects.

Top Upgrades To Help Boost Your Curb Appeal

CATEGORIES Design Inspiration Tips & Tricks

COMMENTS

LEAVE A COMMENT ON THIS POST