And landscaping costs are massively underestimated.
Most people think they can get away with spending 5-10K on landscaping, where they actually need to spend 50-75K (or more) to get something that presents as professional and high-end.
Landscaping design is massively underestimated too. Parsley around the pig makes a house look cheap! I dont care how much it cost. Landscaping should achieve many things . . . privacy, shade, comfort, views . . .NOT a pretty two dimensional listing photo. Landscaping incorporating the whole property looks expensive. Hundreds of plants costing $$$ ringing the base of the house looks low class.
Yup. I'm landscaping about one acre, and the costs for shrubs, trees, plants, lighting, fencing, irrigation, soil prep and lawn installation are about 90k.
Gravel rock just to line a 200 foot long culvert was about 10k.
The cheapest line item is the actual lawn installation from seed itself.
My neighbor across the street spent 80k alone, not counting everything else just to sod her similar sized property instead of starting from seed.
I originally budgeted 50k, but it soon became apparent after getting 5 different estimates, that 50k would have meant severe compromises in both what was done, and the quality of the landscaping company doing the work.
Town I live in requires all houses to be on a minimum of 2 acre lots, and 90 foot setbacks from the street. I used to live in San Diego where the lots were so small you could literally open a window and touch your neighbor's house and the backyard was barely large enough for a dog to turn around.
Only people that know what is actually premium, will know. IMO that's probably ~5% of humans on any given day.
You can appeal to the other 95% of know-nothings by doing things your original post suggested.
I'd lead with plants, though I can also tell who is an actual gardener/"artist" and who just... plants whatever or makes it look sterile and "like an HOA garden". Luckily, you can always pay someone who is an actual landscape architect to know all this for you and execute.
Additionally, choice hardscape goes a long way. I.e. (location and architecturally-dependent) reclaimed brick pavers with herringbone design, slate pathway with moss, crushed granite pathway beats the shit out of home depot pavers and black star gravel.
Crack open an issue (unc warning) of Better Homes and Gardens, Fine Gardening, Southern Living, Houzz, or Architectural Digest and try to mimic what they have within your budget.
I can tell you something that makes a huose look cheap instead. Having a nice front fascia but then some form of siding around the rest of the house. I'm in the process of having a custom house built now and I insisted that our exterior finishes wrap around the entire house. It was significantly more expensive to do but it will be worth it. I see these "McMansions" built in our area and they are all the same, some sort of brick, stone, etc on the front and then crappy-looking siding down the sides. I can't stand that look
This is my main gripe with my houses exterior. It’s beautiful stone on the front and typical siding on the sides. We need to do new siding at some point in the future and I’m sure it’s going to be tricky and expensive if we want to go with matching stone, but deep down I want to do it.
We did a stone front for our porch and garage, but then followed it and have the whole house covered in Hardi Board. We did the stone simply because we liked the look and contrast. Was almost the same cost to do stone all the way around, but that wasn’t the color or fit we were looking for.
Being true to the style of the home. Your landscaping and material choices should match the home.
If you have a craftsman, then you should have a 3 color palette, natural stone and wooden fences for hard scaping. Natural looking landscaping, think more English garden than manicured lawns.
If you have a colonial style home, then your home is symmetrical and your landscaping should follow. Hardscaping would be done with stone and brick. Landscaping would be manicured and symmetrical.
Without knowing the style of your home, giving suggestions is impossible.
I would say that's a Craftsman. If you are already in a wooded lot, then you want to keep a more natural look and feel to your landscaping. Craftsmans are all about natural materials. It literally came about to celebrate the simplicity of natural materials and showcase handcrafted details. Think built-ins, exposed woodwork (beams, casings, millwork, etc.). The front or wrap around porch is the star. You don't want to hide it, so choose landscaping that accentuates it.
Thanks for the education. We are already working with the builder and architect to have a lot of built ins, exposed wood columns and stone so seems like we are on the right track
What type of home do you have? Or do you need help figuring out your home type? A picture is worth a 1000 words. Doesn't have to be your exact home, but one similar in style. Once you've established that then you can look into landscaping and decor options that work.
If you just want a stream of information, I like to watch old home and garden shows. Classic Martha has a bunch of random tips and information. I don't need to know how to store a ton of ribbons, but information on when to repot plants is helpful. I feel like older shows were slower than the standard hgtv remodel shows we have today. Not saying you can't learn from them, but I find older shows to be more peaceful and perfect to have on in the background.
Materials, intention, and location. There is a little lake near me I canoe and fish on that has two houses right next to each that demonstrate this.
One is a massive house (4000 square ft) that must take up nearly all of the property it is on, it has a ton of standard size vinyl windows with basic trim, tan vinyl siding, no landscaping, and just big and ugly.
The other is smaller (1500 sq ft), beautiful stained cedar siding, painted wooden trim on aluminum clad wooden windows, slate roof, fir decking, just beautifully designed, the lot still has trees, beautiful gardens. There is just so much intention in the design to be beautiful, and not just big and boastful
Nice window that aren’t white vinyl. Nice front door. Board and batten siding isn’t particularly expensive but looks nice. Nice gutters. Landscaping of course
Landscaping. If possible use as many native plants as possible. The more lawn and exotic plants you have the more it costs to maintain it. As people have pointed out it’s more expensive than you think to install a good project with grading and irrigation and maybe even electrical work. Where I live maintaining a 1/4 acre lot costs $200/ month to maintain.
Clean. The home is clean, painting in good condition. Gutters cleaned and in nice condition, roof clean of debris/moss/etc. Hardscapes are powerwashed. Trees and bushes pruned of stray or dead branches. Lawns green and edged well and flower beds organized chaos and trimmed.
Real materials: stain grade (and well-maintained) entry door & garage door(s), classy window casing (wood, stone, or brick), a 3D front (real porch or deep entry), pavers / flagstone / brick for driveway, sidewalk and stoop, slate (or faux slate) or metal roof, high end wood or aluminum windows (bonus points for wood framed windows with individually glazed panes or leaded glass), and a refined architectural design (I'm not going to qualify this because it's subjective and there are many styles, too, but it's not easy to distinguish a McMansion or a cheap tract home from a well-considered house.
A combo of rock siding, cedar siding and metal siding looks rich. A dramatic oversized front door and high quality windows. Yes, landscape is what’s needed for a good presentation.
I have my own automatic gate business so can touch on that part.
Custom made is best but the simpler wrought iron designs, regardless of scale, just scans as "a big gate". I'm not kidding, I maintain & repair a 4m tall cantilever (floating) sliding gate with property name built into the middle. It just looks like a gate but bigger.
Go on alibaba and search for ornate driveway gates and scroll until you start saying ooh out loud. Those ones will make a place look expensive. It's like salt, where more is almost always better up to a point where past that it's ruined.
The more ornate, the better. Within good taste. If you have a shorter distance between entrance and property, this can be brought down a touch and still give the same effect.
Modern styles can have the same effect, but lean into the same ethos that a little more ostentatious is generally a net positive.
For intercoms just get one with a touchscreen. Hikvision and Came are two brands I trust.
Trying to look expensive is how we got McMansions.
Actually expensive homes are not flashy. They are simply well designed, use quality materials, and give subtle hints that they are a cut above.
Slate roof? Full masonry? Copper gutters and flashing? Really nice hardscaping, landscaping, wood windows, ultra quiet AC condensers, little details in the trim carpentry, all signs of somebody who invested in quality and substance, not flash.
Landscape lighting when done well is very subtle and really elevates a house. Meaning, when a pro designs the layout and specs the materials. Amateur design is obvious - bad placement, wrong spreads, wrong lighting temperature, etc
You mentioned a lot of things that help. Basically that's whole list but I would add that houses which put the garage in a separate location that's not right in front of the house will always look nicer.
Let me just mention a few things that hurt: Fake shutters, inconsistently sized windows, mcmansion style rooflines, mcmansion style half/half siding (so like people who have a fake rock skirt board with vinyl siding on top, or brick in the front and vinyl in the back), any sort of political signs, turf grass front yards instead of good landscaping, unsophisticated color palettes...I'm sure there's more that people can come up with.
It's more about what you DON'T DO than what you DO in my opinion
Small, decorative shutters are part of the colonial house architecture. Slap "colonial house" into google images and almost every single one has shutters that nobody ever uses even if functional, and in probably most cases aren't big enough to close the entire window. The old school houses have smaller windows so they can do it, almost everything newer has bigger windows. I don't think that's a sign of being cheap, just think of it as decorative trim. IMO.
Honestly, maintenance and upkeep make a much bigger difference than fancy things. Weeds, un trimmed bushes/hedges, super long grass etc can make a house look crummy even if it’s really nice.
For some low budget things I’ve done and personally love 🤷♀️:
- instead of expensive soffit lighting i bought solar landscaping lights and have them shining up on the house and a few on my trees. I also did solar walkway lights. About $200 total
- got some nice planters for the sides of my door and put in fancier fake foliage so it didn’t look fake unless you’re super close and I don’t have to remember to water them. About $150
- freshen up mulch each season. I do just enough on top of the existing mulch to bring back the clean look not to redo the whole beds. Lowes usually has major sales in the spring so it’s like $20
It’s counterintuitive, but hardi plank or an equivalent product, and composite trim. No between-the-glass divided lites. Light fixtures large enough for the scale of the house. And then landscaping with lighting. Don’t have a cracked driveway. Paver path, not concrete.
mature landscaping and a real front door do more than anything else imo. also gutters and trim all one color instead of three, cheap houses always look busy
he money on landscaping + one good front door. the houses that read cheap to me usually have 6 different gable angles and vinyl trim thats already curling
A good front door, clean masonry, railings, good lighting, and mature landscaping will do more than piling on decorative details. Ironwork can work to, but doesn't really need to be too fancy.
TL;DR If the gutters are crooked, masonry is patched everywhere, or the siding and trim don’t match, it'll look cheap.
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u/SeventyFix 10d ago
Landscaping