How to Increase Curb Appeal on a Budget

Curb appeal is how attractive a home looks from the outside. How it looks when a prospective buyer is standing on the curb, you could say. In this post, we’re going to go over how to increase curb appeal on a budget.

Trying to sell your home is stressful, exciting, and difficult all at once. 

Make it easier on yourself by listening to the experts: 94% of realtors suggest that homeowners improve their curb appeal before listing their home. Not only that, but a whopping 99% of realtors insist that curb appeal is important for attracting buyers.

So, what’s curb appeal? Simply put, curb appeal is how attractive, aka how appealing, a home looks from the outside. How it looks when a prospective buyer is standing on the curb, you could say.

But with all of the money and time many sellers put into their big ticket items like the kitchen or the bathroom, many people don’t have much money to put into their curb appeal.

If that sounds like you, keep reading. We’re going to go over how to increase curb appeal on a budget.

1. Update, or Install, Some Pathways

The first thing you should take care of is maintenance of your pathways. 

Disheveled, untidy, or unmaintained pathways give the overall impression that you haven’t been doing your homeowner’s duty of taking care of your house. And that’s the last thing you want your prospective buyers thinking before they even get a look inside!

Be sure to cut the grass and pull the weeds around any pathways leading to your door, around the yard, etc.

If you don’t have any pathways or you think that you need to update the ones you have, head over to a local tile store to pick out some fresh options. Ceramic tile works exceptionally well in pathways especially because it comes in many colors, designs, and shapes to fit the aesthetic you’re going for.

2. Spruce Up Your Door

The door is the window to the home… well, besides the actual windows. Like a person’s eyes (the windows to the soul) the front door is one of the first things people are drawn to and that people use to judge the home instantly. 

The front door makes your home feel welcoming and accepting; it’s one of the main things that adds personality to your home. 

This might not be true if the paint on your door is chipped, if the paint is an unsightly color, or if it doesn’t match the colors of your home and/or yard, for example. 

You have a couple of options to spruce up your door. 

The first is that you could replace the entire door. Look for ones made of specialty wood, ones with intricate carvings, or ones with windows, for example. This is the most expensive option, though, with the average front door installation costing about $3,500.

The second option is replacing the accessories or hardware on the door. For example, you could add a door knocker or a new doorknob. You could install a smart doorbell or a new lighting fixture. Or, you could decorate the door with wreaths, flowers, and other seasonal decor.

Depending on which you choose, this could cost as little as 50 dollars for a nice new door knob or 20 dollars for some seasonal decor. Even the smart doorbell can cost as little as 120 dollars!

The last, and probably most impactful, option you have is a fresh coat of paint. Bold and bright colors often have the greatest impact on your curve appeal, but even just a fresh coat of the same color can do wonders for the overall look. 

And with a can of paint and brushes for the project costing around 75 dollars, this is a budget project that can have a huge overall impact on your home’s look.

3. A Good Wash and Tidy

You don’t always need to put something into your home in order to improve value or curb appeal. In fact, you can take things away in order to improve curb appeal.

What do we mean? We mean that taking away rubbish, weeds, dirt, dead leaves, and grime can go a long way for improving your curb appeal.

Clean out your gutters. Keep up with mowing your lawn. Powerwash your driveway. Remove fallen sticks/branches. Weed your flower beds. Get rid of the fence that’s falling apart. 

You get the idea. 

Keeping your home and lawn clean and tidy is similar to makeover scenes you see in every chick flick. Power washing your driveway and pathways transforms your yard from the disheveled “nerd” to the homecoming queen, so to speak.

Besides washing and taking away some of the grime that’s surely accumulated after inhabiting your home for a while, you should also take the time to tidy up as well. 

Throw a fresh coat of paint on your mailbox. Paint your fence while you’re at it. Buy a new doormat. Make sure all lighting fixtures have working light bulbs. Fix your house numbers that fell off a year ago. Again, you get the idea.

These things all take very little time and cost very little overall. If you’re on a tight budget, do things one at a time as you increase your funds and it will eventually all get done!

4. Add Some Life… Literally

Painting your door and tidying up is certainly going to add some life to your house. But you should add some literal life in the form of plants, flowers, trees, and grass.

Flowers are scientifically proven to make us feel happier when we look at them. Greenery has that same happiness power as well: plants trigger our brains to release endorphins, which make us feel happy and at ease. 

Don’t you want potential buyers to look at your house and instantly feel happy and at home? You can do that by adding some bright flowers to your flower beds, keeping your lawn green and healthy, and planting some trees.

You can do this piece by piece to keep the cost down. If you have a green thumb, you could plant things from seeds or from small saplings to keep things relatively inexpensive.