Curb appeal: It’s a term used in a variety of fields, from real estate to exterior renovation. Though it’s quite commonly used, understanding it on a deeper level requires a bit of investigation. What is it in the first place? How does it affect everything from selling your home to the customer-drawing prowess of a business? And finally, of course, how does your garage door play into it?
Door Power is here to clear the air. Below, you’ll find everything you need to know about curb appeal topped off with a hearty helping of advice on boosting it from your garage door’s perspective.
Curb Appeal Defined
In essence, curb appeal is a term used to describe a home that looks snazzy from the curb—one that makes a good first impression on the passerby. If a home or business has curb appeal, it can be said that it has desirable looks from the outside, whatever desirable means in a given context. If a home or business does not have curb appeal, it either looks like every business around it—nothing special—or is so dilapidated that it isn’t nice to look at at all.
As you may have deduced, what curb appeal means is subjective. It’s sort of a catch-all term used to mean “it looks nice” without denoting specifics. However, when placed in context, the phrase gains quite a bit more color.
Curb Appeal in Real Estate
This is the field in which curb appeal is most often used. Realtors love this term! Generally speaking, here it refers to a home that’s on-trend and well-kept. When a realtor asks you to boost your home’s curb appeal, they’re probably asking you to do some landscaping, make repairs, clean up the yard, or even update your home’s exterior to reflect what’s in vogue and secure a quicker sale. If you ask your realtor how you can boost your curb appeal, they’ll give you advice in those categories.
Curb Appeal in Exterior Renovations
This includes garage door installation too; indeed, pros like those at Door Power do use this term when discussing both residential and commercial garage door installation. Curb appeal here means something a lot more loose, potentially denoting what the individual owner of the home prefers. In a commercial context, though, it’s used to refer to what attracts customers—what’s appealing to them. However, if you’re talking to an exterior contractor about selling your home or business, the definition of curb appeal becomes much more real-estate-esque.
How Does my Garage Door Affect Curb Appeal?
It’s no secret that it does; when you walk past a home, your eyes naturally fall on its garage door. Garage doors thus play a huge role in whether your home has curb appeal or not, regardless of the particulars of the term.
For one, because your garage door frequently contrasts with the siding and trim around it, it demands visual attention. Think about it: how often have you seen a garage door that’s the exact same color as the home it serves? Not often, if at all! Because they’re a natural point of visual contrast, they greatly affect how anyone from potential buyers to customers to your own family sees the exterior of your home or business.
Secondly, garage doors move, unlike the nearby trim, siding, and the like. Even if a passerby will rarely catch you in the thirty seconds or so it takes for your garage door to open, the very fact that the door is designed for motion gives it additional visual contrast in relation to its surroundings. It has a differing design because functionally it needs to, which gives it additional attention-grabbing power.
Finally, if a garage door is ailing, it’s obvious, for the reasons stated above: it naturally draws the eye. Garage doors can have as much of a negative impact on curb appeal as they can the opposite, no matter what the contect, simply because they’re front-and-center when it comes to your home’s exterior.
How to Use Your Garage Door to Boost Curb Appeal
If you’re looking to sell your home, updating your residential garage door to a more current model can help boost your home’s curb appeal as far as real estate is concerned. Garage doors are indeed a frequently suggested upgrade to those looking to sell, though this of course depends on hyperlocal trends and what buyers of your price point tend to look for.
Prompt garage door repair also goes a long way towards bumping up curb appeal in all contexts, no matter if that garage door repair involves the exterior or not. This is because how your garage door operates directly affects its appearance in some ways. Take, for example, broken garage door tracks as a result of neglected maintenance—that certainly will cut down on curb appeal in a real-estate sense, and nobody likes to live in a home that’s falling apart!
Keep Your Garage Door in Good Health With Door Power
A well-maintained garage door is an attractive garage door, and our technicians have all the skills and more needed to keep yours in tip-top shape. Give our garage door repair office a call today at 952-467-3199.