Your Seattle, Washington home inspection company, The Home Detective, is pleased to share with you projects you can do at home to celebrate National Curb Appeal Month.
Can the look and condition of your roof affect the resale value and curb appeal of your home? What about your window frames, entry door or shutters? The answer is absolutely.
During National Curb Appeal Month in August, building product companies are urging homeowners to focus on improving their home’s exterior. Investing in key products now can make your home more marketable in the future.
Sixty-one percent of homeowners say that when house hunting or designing their home, the most attention-grabbing exterior feature was the style of the home, followed by how the house looked on the property (43 percent), according to the 2011 DaVinci Roofscapes’ Homeowners Exterior Preferences Study conducted by Harris Interactive.
And, when it comes to adding curb appeal to a home, color counts. Fifty-nine percent of homeowners place a lot of emphasis on the role that color plays when they think about replacing major exterior home features.
“To enhance curb appeal it’s all about creating top down color by working from the roof down through the different elements of the exterior such as siding, windows, trim and doors,” says Kate Smith, president of Sensational Color. “For example, a colonial style home with a warm Autumn Blend polymer shake roof could be ideally matched with a home exterior in a neutral stone color.
“Then, add pops of color for curb appeal, such as chocolate brown vinyl window frames, like those available from Simonton Windows. Shutters and trim around the home could use the same deep brown color. A stand-out color like pine green or marine blue would then be added to the entry door to add personality to the exterior.”
Smith, who has authored the free online FRESH Home Exterior Colors and FRESH Color Schemes for Your Home Exterior guides, spends a good deal of her time advising homeowners, remodelers and builders on selecting the perfect colors for the exterior of the home.
“It’s important to remember that it all starts on the roof,” says Smith. “When you’re working top down with unlimited color options from a company like DaVinci Roofscapes, a homeowner has an open palette for designing the perfect home exterior.”
Smith recommends that other key factors to enhance curb appeal can be found by selecting products for the home that are easily painted and maintained. “For me, it’s all about adding color to easy-care products,” says Smith. “That’s one reason why I like Fypon decorative millwork pieces so much. These smooth polyurethane pieces come primed and ready to paint. We’re talking about shutters, louvers, door and window trim, balustrade systems and even brackets and mouldings to increase the exterior appeal of a home.
“And, of course, nothing pops with color like the front door. I recommend homeowners consider stylish and paintable fiberglass entry doors from Therma-Tru. This company invented fiberglass doors and they offer many options for adding warmth, color and elegance to the home exterior.”
Replacing worn out exterior home features is a smart investment for homeowners. Many products added to the home have a high return-on-investment at the time of a home sale according to the 2014 Cost Versus Value Study conducted by Remodeling magazine. Adding energy-efficient vinyl windows as a mid-range project to a home can have a cost recoup value of 78.7 percent, while the addition of vinyl siding can have 78.2 percent recoup rate.
The same study reports that the replacement of an entry door with a fiberglass door can result in 70.8 percent of the cost recouped, while a new roof on the home has a 67.6 percent cost recoup. The study What Today’s Home Buyers Really Want from the National Association of Home Builders reports that the three most-wanted outdoor features consumers desire for their home exteriors are lighting, a patio and a front porch.
National Curb Appeal Month was launched by Fypon. The free comprehensive and colorful online guides created by Smith are available for downloading at www.sensationalcolor.com/colorforyourhome.
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