Everyone wants haus appeal, but might not realize it. The German word haus, meaning house, has come to represent a European home décor throughout the world. Hence, the Amazon store, Haus Appeal, a lighting and other fixture purveyor.
In the United States, the term curb appeal is used more often, referring to any areas of the home or yard viewable from the street. The German term applies more broadly. Haus appeal lighting, landscaping, and design elements comprise every area and aspect of a home’s exterior. So, how can you bump up your home’s curb or Haus appeal?
Customize Your Blinds
Installing custom blinds can create haus appeal, lighting a room when you raise the blinds, but protecting privacy when you lower them. Some blinds offer energy efficiency benefits and help insulate the windows. Allowing natural light to flow inside your home helps to create a welcoming space. From the home’s exterior, custom blinds create a colorful, eye-catching display within the windows.
To further the effect of the window treatment color scheme, hang curtains in either a similar hue or a contrasting color inside. For example, to use similar hues of color, hang navy blue blinds with powder blue curtains. Contrasting colors that work well in most decors include black blinds with white curtains or white blinds with black curtains.
Fix Any Leaks
Address any leaks in the home because interior issues can grow to become exterior ones if not addressed quickly. Most people notice plumbing leaks pretty quickly, but how about roof leaks? If you don’t visit your attic or upper crawl space often, you might not know one exists until water drips through the roof and ceiling right onto you! Avoid this unenjoyable experience by having your home’s roof inspected annually, a free service provided by most roofers.
Once you’ve addressed any discovered problems, increase haus appeal, by lighting the eaves with recessed white or warm LED lights. This increases the home’s safety and creates a cozy glow around the roof’s edges. Better yard lighting deters thieves because they don’t want to be seen breaking in.
Control All Pests
Increasing haus appeal lighting in the yard can help deter some pests, too. Ground lights and porch or deck lights don’t just create a welcoming exterior, they put off pests that prefer darkness. Install bug lights on the home’s porch or deck to kill unwanted flies and mosquitoes. Citronella candles go a long way to chasing off mosquitoes.
Some rodent problems require calling the local pest co. Don’t be like Bill Murray’s character in Caddyshack, waging war on a varmint in your yard. Save your landscaping by calling a professional to deal with moles, skunks, and other damaging critters. Many pest control services offer capture and relocation of rodents, a more humane way to deal with them.
Build a Fence
Delineating the borders of your property can add to its outdoor aesthetic. A commercial fence contractor can help create ambiance and divide your property from those adjacent to it. Although chain link fences lack design aesthetics, you can add canvas to them to create a solid wall. Wood, metal, brick, stone, and rock fence designs offer greater design appeal.
Fencing your home’s yard also makes it safer. Like haus appeal lighting in the yard and under the eaves, fences with fence lighting deter thieves. Fenced yards provide a safe place for pets and children to play by keeping them from running into the street.
Invest in Fun
While you busily upgrade your home’s exterior, invest in fun, too. For homeowners with houses along a golf course or in a subdivision with a golf course, it makes sense to invest in a custom golf cart. Choose a design that suits your personality and provide it with a covered place to park, so your cart keeps looking nice. Install haus appeal lighting around the carport and along any path from the yard to the golf course.
Design Your Lawn
Of course, driving over your grass won’t win you any friends at the homeowners’ association. You’ll just end up spending more money on lawn care services. Contact a landscaping service and have them install drivable pathways and hardscapes of either cement or gravel. These paths provide you with a safe place to drive your golf cart that won’t harm your grass or create ruts in your yard.
Add haus appeal lighting using stake lights along the edges of the pathways. Add even more haus appeal with edging stones or plantings along the edge of the paths. Edge the home with plantings or a garden bed, too.
Repave Your Driveway
While you have people putting in hardscapes for the golf cart, upgrade the driveway, too. The same asphalt contractors that lay the golf cart paths can repave your home’s driveway. Consider adding a little sparkle to it with shimmering metallic dust in the cement or mixing in iridescent stones to offer an exciting look. No need to stop adding light with the shimmering stones; use stake lights along the driveway edges for more haus appeal lighting.
Have a Home Audio System
You won’t realize how much the house benefits from a home audio system until your first cookout. That’s when the speakers installed in the eaves emit the pleasing sounds of your favorite music for everyone in attendance to enjoy no matter in what area of the yard they stand. Add haus appeal lighting that syncs to the music for a fun feature to use at night.
Upgrade the Aesthetics
By now, you’ve added haus appeal lighting to most of the areas of your landscape. It’s time to link your home’s interior design to its exterior design. You’ve got a few ways to do this, starting with your color scheme.
Consider the color scheme you use in the room that your French doors or patio sliding door open into the yard from. Typically, the den or dining room opens into the yard or garden. Use the same colors for your patio furniture. Doing so links the two spaces in décor.
Bring the outdoors inside by using potted plants just inside the home’s doorways. Create a wall of plants along the patio entrance to continue the greenery inside the home. Potted flowers or hanging vines also create an indoor/outdoor link.
Duplicate exterior features, such as large rocks or a stone wall by using the same type of rocks or stones inside. Line the path into the home from the yard with rocks or stones. Creating a grouping with one or two large boulders and a bevy of smaller rocks just inside the door can act as a rock garden to tie the interior design to the exterior.
Of course, add haus appeal lighting to brighten the transitional area, too. Too often, the area outside the door only features a dim bulb light and the interior room has an overhead in the center of the room. This setup detracts from a focal feature of the room – the wide doorway with its views of the landscape. Add haus appeal lighting on both sides of the doorway, lighting the area just above and below the door.
Light each step, too. Use deck lights on the steps to make seeing where to step simpler. This makes going in and out of the house safer at night.
Control Your Water
Easy access to water doesn’t happen everywhere. Sometimes, it requires water well drilling because the area isn’t served by a water utility. When this occurs, consider having all water-related work done at once. That means drilling the well and connecting it via plumbing to the home.
If your rural home also features corrals or a barn, consider having a second well drilled at either of these features. This second well may feature a pump handle that lets you attach a hose for easily filling feeding and watering troughs. Make it easier to see the farm well and its pump by adding solar lights for haus appeal lighting.
Add a Deck or Porch
Add a front porch or a back deck to increase the haus appeal of any home. A porch or deck offers an outdoor living space for enjoying nice weather and entertaining guests at cookouts or garden parties. Although porches typically use similar designs, decks come in a variety of options. Consider a deck that connects the home to the swimming pool or one that wraps around the entire house.
A custom deck builder can create a design that specifically suits your home. Choose materials, varnish, sealants, and paint that compliment the home’s exterior. Remember to include handrails and newel posts for a finished look.
Build Ancillary Structures
Not everyone needs a pool house, but most yards can benefit from a gazebo. Construct this landscape feature a few yards into the backyard, typically at least 10 yards from the home. This shady spot offers views of the yard from every side, but covers you from above, providing a spot to sit while enjoying rainfall.
Whether detached or attached, paint the garage to match the house and the gazebo. Also, replace the garage’s roof when you replace the home’s. Detached garages sometimes sit unattended since they’re behind a home. Don’t let this happen to your garage because it detracts big time from your curb appeal.
Rural homes sometimes feature a utility shed or well house. This small structure about the size of a storage shed contains mechanical equipment related to the well, plumbing, and irrigation, if applicable. Paint it to match the house, too.
Build a Cute Cat or Dog Run
Animals deserve to get to play outside in their natural habitat. Cats can easily escape a fenced yard though. The answer is to construct an animal run, a fully enclosed area adjacent to your home that provides them with a safe place to play.
These animal runs don’t have a floor, using the natural earth as their bottom layer. The four walls equal the home’s height and a roof covers it, so no animals break out. Typically, the walls consist of a screen that lets fresh air in without letting the animal out. Paint this structure to match the main color of your house.
Add haus appeal lighting here, too. Consider string lights around the interior perimeter and stake lights at each of the four exterior corners. These four crucial lights make it easy to spot the corners of the run when outside at night.
Grooming the Yard
Instead of combing its hair, you must mow the grass of your yard. During fall, rake its leaves and bag them. Use them with kindling to make building a fire in the fireplace or fire pit simpler. If your yard doesn’t have a fire pit or chiminea, add one.
Unless you want to hire a lawn care service, you can do this gratifying job yourself. Mowing and raking the yard have become time-honored American traditions. It’s a trademark of the American dream to own a home and dote on its yard.
How to Spot Areas that Need Lighting
If you’ve added each type of lighting as this article mentioned it, you’ve probably got a well-lit yard now. Since every yard differs, check yours. Just before sunset, spray on some DEET and sit down in a deck chair outside. As the sun sets, notice which areas of your yard get dark.
These crevices that escaped the first round of task and focal point lighting need illumination. They provide dark entry points for prowlers or points of danger to visitors or children at play. Note these areas and add haus appeal lighting accordingly.
Adding Haus Appeal to Your Home Exterior
You don’t have to live in Europe to design with haus appeal. Your home can develop this cheery exterior and welcoming feeling with the right home accessories like lighting. Add the little touches that make a house, a home, then add lighting to help them exist more safely. Get started today on your haus appeal.
