Real Life Rooms: A Reimagined Ranch Exterior with Added Curb Appeal

Hey there Remodelaholic readers! Dawn here, from AD Aesthetic, and I’m back with another reader question mockup to hopefully inspire some creative ideas for updating your ranch home’s exterior and upping the curb appeal on any dated home exterior. If you’ve missed any of my previous reader question mockups, you can always see all my posts here.

If you follow Remodelaholic on Facebook, you’ve probably seen several of the reader questions that are submitted every month. Well each month here on Remodelaholic, I choose one reader submitted photo to offer my two cents on, and I create a Photoshop mock up of what I would do if I were in your shoes! (Pssssst— you can submit your reader questions by messaging Remodelaholic on Facebook, and if you want to get chosen, please be sure to include a good quality photo!)

First though, my standard disclaimer: While I can recommend ideas that I think look nice, I have never seen this house in real life and don’t have accurate measurements. I am also not an architect or landscaper and do not know the planting recommendations for your area- I just like to make things look nice. I can’t guarantee that any of the items I put in my ‘virtual’ design will actually work in real life (or that they’ll fit your design style for that matter), and this is not intended to be a professional design consultation. So think of this as a just-for-fun rendering that hopefully gets your wheels turning and provides some inspiration!

On to the fun!

READER QUESTION from Courtney —
Looking for ideas for curb appeal and color ideas for the doors. I was told I couldn’t paint the whole house.

This home caught my eye because I’ve seen so many similar homes, and I feel like a lot of people maybe struggle to know how to make their ranch stand out. Especially if you feel ‘stuck’ with a paint color that you didn’t select, or don’t know how to accent. So with the no-painting challenge in mind, I was ready to reimagine this ranch home into something beautiful. Before I started though, I went looking for some inspiration. Here are a few of the homes that inspired my makeover:

Ranch Curb Appeal Inspiration

Reimagined Ranch Exterior and Curb Appeal Ideas — Image Source: HGTV Photo Credit: Rachel Whyte

With all that curb appeal inspiration, here’s what I did to turn this home from plain to pretty:

Sources:

contains affiliate links; see our full disclosure policy here

House Numbers | Garage Door | Stone Veneer (similar)

Shutters | Porch Light | Planters

Pergola | Outdoor Curtains | Dining Set

Curb Appeal Tips for a Reimagined Ranch Exterior

Don’t overlook the garage

For a lot of homes, the garage makes up a large part of the home’s facade, but it is often overlooked when it comes to curb appeal. I guess sometimes people see garages as more functional than anything else, but treating it as a main feature of the house can really pay off in the aesthetic of your home. Investing in a wood or wood-look garage door, and tying it into the overall look by bringing in cedar shutters also, creates an entirely new visual for this home.

Create a welcoming (and prominent) entrance

One of the first things I noticed about this home was that the entrance really needed some help standing out. In the before image, you can see how the front door blends in with the siding, whereas the dark windows jump out as the only contrast in color. Combine that with a second door in the front of the home, and a sidewalk that runs from the driveway rather than straight to the door from the sidewalk, and the front door almost feels like an afterthought. To remedy this, I made sure to use several tricks to help the main entrance stand out in the after image.

First, I added railings to the stoop to give it a more intentional and grand look. I also added landscaping on either side of the door, but not in front of the sidewalk. Having this sense of balance helps the eye immediately recognize the center of the home as the entrance, but keeping the plantings behind the sidewalk helps to highlight the path to the porch also. Finally, I gave both the front door and the secondary door a bright pop of sage green. This color works so perfectly with the golden-tan siding color of the home, because it balances out the yellow tones with a cooler hue that really catches the eye. Changing out the trim from deep brown to a clean white also helps let the doors stand out, while the windows take a secondary role in the visual hierarchy.

Think outside the box

For an extra bit of interest to this home, I went ahead and added a cedar pergola to the parking pad on the side of the garage. While this is something many people wouldn’t think to do, and that may not work in all instances, I like it here for a few reasons. Number one, it adds curb appeal and makes the home look almost a third larger than it is. Number two, it creates added living space when used as an entertaining area, but could easily still be used for extra parking by moving furniture out of the way. Number three: it adds a level of customization to a home that might otherwise resemble many other houses in the neighborhood.

So what do you think? What would you do if this were your home?

As always, thank you to Cassity and the Remodelaholic team for having me back each month. If you like this post, and have a design dilemma you’d like me to mock up some ideas for, you can ask your questions by sending Remodelaholic a message over on Facebook, or checkout my mockup design services over on my site adaesthetic.com. And be sure to follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram and say hello! Have a great day, friends!

-Dawn