It is no secret that making the outside of your home look better will up the way people view and make it easier to sell. Experts say that if you spend an amount that equals 5% of the home’s value on landscaping, the value of the home will go up by about 15%. According to Money Magazine, if you have your landscaping redone before you start the process of selling your home, you can get anywhere between 100andamp; and 200% more for your house. When many go about doing their remodel and landscaping jobs, they overlook the driveways. This is unfortunate because they are the first things people see from the street. Here are some landscape ideas for your driveway that can help your home look great.
- Work out the design of your driveway before you have it put in. A lot of homeowners see their driveway as only something to get your car from the street to the garage. When they are viewed that way, driveways are never seen as a real feature that can add style and even beauty to a home. This transitional area does not have to be a simple black strip of pavement. You also do not have to sacrifice function for style. You can talk to landscape services companies about the number of different materials you can use for your driveway. Many of these look great and will last a long time.
- How many people will be coming and going on your driveway? This is an important question to think about before you work on your design. There are driveways that see a lot of heavy traffic — maybe they need to accommodate the landscaping companies that work on your property or you have a lot of friends and family that visit often. Not all materials for driveways are created equal and you need to get the right materials for your style and your needs.
- Give some thought to how big it needs to be. In addition to thinking about how much traffic your driveway will see, you need to give some thought to what kinds of vehicles will be coming your way. This means you need to know what vehicles will be there so you can design your driveway to be the right size. At the same time, you need to make sure you have no right angles that cannot be navigated. You need to look at how your visitors will get back from your home to the street. There are some driveways that allow people to turn around and then exit to the road and others where people have to back out. If you have the space for it, putting in a place for people to turn around is always the best option.
- Keep an eye on the width. Too many driveways in the nation and around the world fall short of being useful. They can be constructed to be bigger than is needed for one car but not quite big enough for two. The other issue is that cars, in America and elsewhere, are getting larger and larger. The driveways that were great for two cars in decades past would no longer be good for a Hummer, SUV, or truck today.
- Think about spots for your visitors. When you are driving around your town, you may see a lot of driveways that are packed with cars that are parked in all sorts of wild configurations. One way to prevent that from happening at your house is to design your driveway to accommodate your friends and family. The problem of random parking configurations is not merely an aesthetic one. When your friends and family park their vehicles in a way that lets them spill over into the yard, they can do some damage to your grass, create situations where you have erosion, which can lead to runoffs that you really do not want. Working out your driveway design to get enough space will save you a lot of time and energy in the long run.
Applying a number of landscape design techniques to your driveway will make that area of the property a real asset to your home.