12 Garage Door Painting and Other Exterior Home Ideas to Refresh Your Curb Appeal

The way you maintain, design, and furnish your home’s interior speaks volumes about your preferences and personality -- the same goes for your home’s exterior. When you consider that most people will only ever see the outside of your home, expressing yourself via your home exterior becomes all the more important. Beyond mere self-expression, though, taking great care of your home’s outward facing appearance is also a matter of maintaining its market value.

“Curb appeal” is a popular term that refers to how desirable a home looks from a passerby’s perspective. Even if you won’t be selling your property for a long time, keeping up your home’s curb appeal ensures that your home remains valuable. Plus, who doesn’t want their home to be the envy of their neighborhood?

A home’s curb appeal is determined by a number of factors and features, including its paint job, decor, landscape, cleanliness, and more-- even the state of your garage doors plays a significant role in your home’s overall look. With all that in mind, let’s outline 12 garage door painting and other exterior home ideas to refresh your curb appeal and pronounce your personality.

1. Creating Accents with Garage Doors

It’s not uncommon for homeowners to neglect their garage doors when updating their house exterior. In a way, it might feel as if your garage is somehow separate for your home, but this is not the case. In fact, most garage doors provide a large canvas by virtue of their size and design. These spacious features are easily seen from a distance, which makes your garage doors key components in determining your home’s curb appeal. One way to take advantage of this space is to paint your garage doors with a color that contrasts that of your home’s siding. Creating exterior accents adds dynamic flair to your home. Just make sure the color you choose for your garage doors does not clash with your siding in a negative way.

2. Matching Your Garage Doors to Your Siding

On the other hand, you might decide to have your garage doors blend in with the look of your siding. This strategy can make your home look sleeker and more uniform. Plus, you might add some contrast to your garage doors by painting its trim or framed components with an accented color. Doing so gives you the best of both worlds -- your garage doors will match the rest of your home painting job while still standing out on their own.

3. Power Washing Your Property

When we talk about “refreshing” something, our minds turn to thoughts of cleanliness. Indeed, one of the best ways to refresh your curb appeal is to clean your home’s face and features with a pressure washer. Ideally, you should pressure wash your home once or twice a year to remove dust, dirt, debris, and traces of mold or mildew. Additionally, pressure washing should take place prior to any exterior painting job, as painting over a dirty, peeling surface is a recipe for disaster. Of course, power washing your exterior surfaces properly and safely is often easier said than done. If you lack experience in this regard, hire professionals to handle this task.

4. Repainting Your Siding

Aside from washing your home, the most obvious and large-scale way to revitalize your curb appeal is to repaint its entire exterior. Depending on your region’s climate and the type of siding your home boasts, you may want to repaint your home every 5-10 years anyway to keep its exterior well-protected. Of course, if you want to update its color scheme, you might not want to wait this long. Whether you wish to paint your exterior for maintenance purposes or for aesthetic reasons, this is no small task, which is why most homeowners hire exterior painting services to handle the entire project, or at least most of it.

5. Repainting Your Trim

Your home’s trim, shutters, and other features are often included in discussions of exterior painting projects. However, if you don’t need or want to repaint your entire home, one way to refresh its curb appeal with less effort is to simply update these smaller features. You might be surprised at how big an impact repainting your trim can have on your home’s curb appeal as a whole. This is especially the case if you choose an exterior house paint with a contrasting color to your home’s siding.

6. Repainting and Refinishing Your Front Door

The front door to your home is another key feature that, when well-maintained and strategically painted, captures the eye and enhances the overall appearance of your home. Plus, your front door is the primary entrance into your home, so the more inviting it looks, the better. There are many ways to go about updating your doors, too. If you enjoy the natural grain look of your wooden door but it has seen better days, you might opt into having it refinished, which involves removing the door, cleaning, sanding, and sealing it, replacing its hardware, and re-attaching it when complete. Or, if you want your door to complement or accent your home’s siding, you might paint it a particular color. Whatever you choose, refreshing your door is a must when it comes to refreshing your curb appeal.

7. Installing a New Mailbox

Up until now, we’ve mostly touched on cleaning and painting as methods for enhancing your curb appeal. As mentioned earlier, your home’s curb appeal involves more than its direct paint job. You must also consider the features surrounding your home that make up your property, including your mailbox. Installing a unique mailbox can make a strong statement about your personality and act as a proxy for your home’s overall aura. Some people prefer “kitschy” mailboxes shaped like animals or boasting strong colors, while others might go for a more subtle or elegant design.

8. Updating Your Landscape

Not everyone who owns a home has much of a lawn to speak of, but even those with smaller green spaces should take the time to maintain them. Keeping the grass green and trimmed is the bare minimum. If you wish to enhance your curb appeal, you might cultivate a garden and plant seasonal flowers that match your home’s color scheme. An impressive landscape only adds beauty and value to the home that lies in its center.

9. Decorating Your Exterior Spaces

Decorating your home’s exterior can go a long way, too. Again, the decorations you choose, the amount you put up, and the placement of them should reflect and complement your personality without distracting from your home’s beauty itself. In other words, your exterior decor should enhance, not diminish, your home’s curb appeal.

10. Furnishing Your Deck or Patio

The same principle just mentioned also applies to the way you furnish your patio or deck, if you’re fortunate enough to have these spaces. Though comfort is perhaps the most important aspect of patio furniture selection, displaying mismatched, outdated, and/or worn down furniture can drag down your home’s curb appeal. If possible, try to purchase furniture that visually goes well together or at least captures positive attention while still providing the outdoor comfort you desire.

11. Lighting the Outside

Your home’s face can look quite different depending on the time of day. This is because in the daytime it will receive different levels of light from the sun, and at night will be illuminated by the light fixtures you choose for your home. Just because fewer people will view your home from the outside at night doesn’t mean curb appeal no longer matters when it gets dark outside. Updating your lighting to emphasize the color and texture of your home is yet another way to refresh your curb appeal.

12. Creating a Welcoming Walkway

Lastly, consider how you and others enter your home. Is it simply through the garage? Is there a path from the sidewalk or driveway to the front door? And if so, is that pathway inviting? Even if you don’t welcome many guests into your home, giving off a welcoming atmosphere will enhance your home’s curb appeal. One way to achieve this effect is to create or update the walkway that leads to your front door and/or side doors, etc. You might go with cobblestone, brick, wood, concrete, etc. Whatever material or design you go with, make sure it matches the color and texture of your home.

Is it time to refresh your home’s curb appeal? At Nash Painting, we take pride in helping homeowners realize their vision and achieve their goals. We are experienced Nashville painters that also serve Brentwood, TN, Franklin, TN, and surrounding areas. To learn more about us, our services, and our values, call us at 615-829-6858 today!