Here’s an informative article by Kelly Roberson for Better Homes & Gardens.
Want to make your home the belle of the block? Look no further than your outdoor areas. With these front porch ideas, you can boost your home’s curb appeal and improve the functionality of its outdoor space.
Landscaping is important to maximizing streetside beauty, but front porches play a strong role in increasing curb appeal for homes. Whether you have a smaller front stoop with room just for a chair and table or an expansive area that offers space for a dining table, there are strategies you can put in place to boost the beauty of your home’s curb appeal.
1. Establish a Connection from Streetside to Front Porch
From overgrown shrubs to a hidden walkway, too often the pathway to a home is difficult to find or navigate. The very first thing your front porch can do to boost curb appeal is to clearly articulate the way to your home’s entrance. Hardscaping or other structures such as arbors can help, as can cleverly placed containers that direct traffic.
2. Offer a Transition
The abrupt change from a lawn and flower beds in the front yard to the material of the front porch—brick, stone, wood—can be jarring, both in approach and from the street. To better use your front porch to improve curb appeal, include plants—in containers, window boxes, even a few potted up on the porch—to effectively move from outside to in.
3. Include Seating as a Stop-Over
Even the smallest front porches benefit from a small chair or a minuscule table as a way station between outside and inside, and that in turn can help boost your curb appeal. And because your front porch is the public face of your home, seating can encourage guests to stay outside and engage with neighbors and streetside activity, too.
4. Understand Your Front Porch’s Limitations
Your front porch can work wonders to boost your curb appeal—but only if you help, too. Overgrown bushes will hide windows and make your porch and home seem foreboding. Peeling paint discourages passersby from feeling welcome. An empty area can make your home feel less warm and inviting. A little investment of time for maintenance and upkeep, as well as a few thoughtful resources for furniture and plants, can do wonders to make your front porch a key element in your home’s best curb appeal yet.
5. Identify the Front Door
An instant way to use your front porch to improve curb appeal is to offer a front door that’s easily identifiable. That may mean a distinctive paint or stain color, a chandelier overhead, or sconces on either side.
6. Choose a Complementary Color Palette
In the same way that your home’s tree, shrub, and flower choices are in tune with your home’s architecture—a cottage garden for a cottage-style house, for example—rely on the color palette of your home’s front porch to help update and upgrade your curb appeal.