Update Your Curb Appeal for Under $100 in One Weekend
Flora and Fauna
Weather permitting, flowers and shrubbery are the easiest and quickest way to add some fabulous curb appeal. If you are willing to buy smaller plants that can grow in on your time, then you can really get a lot of curb appeal for your $100. You can buy a try of six small impatients plants or other affordable flowers for as little as $3.00 in the spring and summer months at any home improvement store. Choose colorful plants and use them to accent walkways, steps, and the porch. Sticking with one color will create huge visual curb appeal. Online catalogue sources like www.parkseed.com and www.whiteflowerfarm.com are great resources for buying bulk flowers and shrubbery perfect for updating and adding color to your existing curb appeal.
Weather may be a problem here if you are looking at the fall or winter months, but great flowers and shrubbery do lend themselves to these cooler month. Fall is the best time to plant most bulbs. The best feature about bulbs is that they return year after year updating your curb appeal with little to no work from you. Most bulbs multiply throughout years, giving you free flowers. Another great feature is that you can buy a large variety of bulbs that will bloom at different times thought the spring, summer, and fall. With a little planning and less than $100, you can update your curb appeal three seasons out of the year. I love to run over to my local garden supply store in the fall and check out the big cheap bags of mixed bulbs on sale. You can almost find bags a tulips or daffodils with about 50 bulbs for about $9.99.
Paint
Another great way to update curb appeal for under $100 is to paint your front door in an accent color. Painted front doors are a huge design trend that seems to never go out of style. A vibrant red door is warm and welcoming. It will make a great first impression to any curb appeal. One tip for painting your front door: choose a color that compliments your home. Personally, to get color ideas I use those great little color booklets at my local Lowe’s store. They already match three colors together. I found one the color of my house that had a secondary color that matched my trim. My house was cream, my trim was brown. Their third color was a burgundy red. I also found another color combo that had hunter green placed with my existing home colors. I had never even thought of these colors as an option. I thought I would be stuck replacing my door or painting it white, which I did not believe would be the best curb appeal for my somewhat drab house. Every paint store I have ever been in has these little color recommendation booklets. Sometime they are in the historical color selection, but more than often they are on little post card sized design idea cards.
Lighting
Lighting is a great way to add visual curb appeal, especially at night. There If you are willing to invest a little time and energy into a weekend project, you will be able to do these lighting projects for $100. Strategically place spot lighting in your yard to highlight existing shrubbery and landscaping. You could even use accent lights to highlight your steps or walk way. This would have great appeal from the curb. Finally, even though it would be small, you could simple change out the existing light bulbs in your outdoor lighting for a quick and cheap update. I had an extremely bright front light that was nearly blinding when you walked up to my front porch. Originally it had seemed like a good idea for safety purposes, but it turned out to be terrible and garish. I replaced the 100-watt bulb with a 40-watt bulb. I could still easily see on my front porch and it had a nice inviting warm glow that was instant curb appeal.
