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Help your designer get this right and your home will literally beckon visitors to come inside. This awesome entry illustrates the benefits of overly wide steps as well as cantilevered tread nose which contains hidden lighting bars that make them stand out at night. Extending the depth of each step's tread proves a more attractive alternative to bunched steps and sloped walkways. But in this picture, the planting of geraniums in front of the ramp is so colorful that the eye tends to concentrate on the flowers, not the wooden structure. When reviewing your designer's plans, make sure all three experiences are well detailed.
When real estate agents talk about curb appeal, they're referring to the overall impact of a home when a prospective buyer drives by. This first impression is also shared by everyone who visits your home for the first time. But curb appeal is a brief impression compared to the arrival experience, which requires specific design concepts be integrated into a front yard.
The Vehicular Experience
Before, an overbearing, uninteresting facade, too-small windows, and lack of details prevented this home from reaching the full potential of its exterior entryway. Originally, the front door was tucked out of sight and the shrub line created a physical separation between home and walkway. The homeowners relocated the entryway, giving it presence and style with an arched window and columns. Windows were enlarged, too, to give them a sense of proportion with the expansive home's size.
Front door colors, walkways, landscaping, and other exterior entryway ideas should all work together to create an inviting entrance. These newly remodeled home exteriors demonstrate entryway designs that maximize curb appeal and beckon guests inside. Before, a lack of attention to detail and an overgrown landscape kept this historically minded home from shining. For the new entryway design, the homeowners took inspiration from interior improvements to reshape the exterior. A new bonnet-top front door adds a simple decorative element to the stately architectural features of the 1922 Colonial-style home.
Colorful Entryway Design
In these pictures of landscaping showing front door entrances, I will provide examples of entryway plantings showing how each of these objectives can be met. Rather than depending solely on path lighting in the adjacent planter to show visitors where the edge of pavement lies, consider the aesthetics of lighting integrated into the steps themselves. Louvered vents set into the face of each step riser offers spots of brighter light along with easy bulb replacement. More complex are linear light bars built-in beneath the cantilevered tread nose of a step. If the visible riser is veneered with colored tile and bathed in linear lighting, this option can contribute outstanding night time sculptural qualities.
By fixing the siding, tearing out overgrown shrubs, and giving it a fresh coat of paint, the homeowners gave the entryway a fresh face. This homely bungalow originally felt hidden by overgrown trees and a carelessly chosen front stoop. For the entryway makeover, the homeowners took charge of the approach to the front door, removing overgrown trees and adding a paved sidewalk lined with pretty flowers. In place of plain, inoperable square windows, they added oversized, multipane versions that flood the interior with light. A small arched covering signals the front door, and a bump-out gives new height to the small home. Outdoor living spaces are often placed at the back of a home, but there's a certain charm and value in adding them to the front landscape.
The Entry Experience
What makes a house exceptional is how its landscape greets people through a series of experiences, all of them well known to every landscape architect. When you come to understand them as well, you can help the designers exploit every opportunity when dealing with the conditions, challenges and opportunities of a home's front yard. This formal-style house is complemented nicely by the symmetrically arranged planting urns on its porch. The benefit to having a large stoop allows those in a group to stand comfortably as you come to the door. An arbor or overhead structure can be added to make this space more sheltered in inclement weather while punching out the visibility of a minimal doorway. When lots became smaller, builders began designing homes with the garage more prominent than the front door.
Avoid surfacing that involve narrow gaps that are hazardous to women's stiletto heels. Provide subtle yet adequate lighting to delineate the parking area after dark. If there is attractive planting or a vulnerable tree close to the paving edge, add a curb or wheel stop to limit bumper overhang damage. A recessed entry door pushed up against a wall is marked by gently curved flagstones with the presence of a palm's wide trunk and canopy pointing visitors toward their destination. This house has ample room and takes advantage, welcoming guests with grandeur and with pineapple decor, in the form of finials. If steps are involved, consider stretching the tread while maintaining riser height.
Front entry landscaping
Your landscape designer must integrate all three of these experiences correct in a cohesive, and more importantly, intuitive way. When done properly, the resulting composition will become your personal greeting to everyone who visits day or night. Pre-renovation, an oversize gambrel roofline on the garage disrupted the sight line, creating awkward views in the connection between house and garage.
Indeed, the brick columns must be larger here, to match the scale of their surrounding and to hold their own with the impressive array of perennials planted all around them. But it's quite a different matter when visitors must ascend a slope to approach your front door entrance. You have a practical, functional challenge with which to deal first and foremost. You must install landscaping that will provide access from the street to the front door entrance. Not only that, but it must be safe and must not encourage soil erosion on the slope.
Note also the brick pathway leading from the fence to the front door entry; visually, it picks up the brickwork in the house across the street, suggesting that this landscape is right at home in its neighborhood. Previously hidden under a deep extended roofline, the front door felt unimportant, and old-fashioned colors and materials made the home feel nondescript. After an exterior entryway makeover, new shake shingles and bright white trim around windows and doors add charm to the home's front facade.
This small stoop offers little interest until the designer opted for matched concrete bowls, each featuring a haute modern species of Sanseveria. If you are interested in landscaping around front entries, then you will also want to check out my tips on foundation plantings. We use the latest and greatest technology available to provide the best possible web experience.
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