When your home exterior is neat, tidy and inviting, it’s immediately attractive and welcoming to visitors.
But since you and your family are its permanent occupants, it’s actually more important that it reminds you that you’re about to enter a place of sanctuary when you pull up in your car after suffering the day from hell at work.
There are a number of novel ways to spruce up the outside of your home and garden with natural products that achieve outstanding results and remind you of just how special your domestic space really is.
With that in mind, here are five naturally stylish materials that elevate your home exterior.
- Wood
Whether it’s rattan, bamboo or oak, wood is a wonderful organic material with traditional applications in soffits and fascias, garden furniture and solid front doors.
But wood can also be harnessed for slightly more complex construction projects. For instance, if you treat yourself to an orangery from Vale Garden Houses, the effect on your home exterior is truly transformational.
- Hemp
Hemp is one of nature’s most versatile products and has been variously used in medicine, sailing and homemaking for centuries.
However, the ideal comfy conversation piece for your garden might just be a hemp canvas hammock that allows you or your guests to sway themselves to sleep while sipping a cocktail or immersing themselves in a good book. Find the ideal model at The Hemp Shop online.
- Iron
Although we’ve thankfully evolved beyond the Iron Age, this metal still makes a welcome addition to any garden due to its terrifically tactile qualities.
So a cast-iron firepit in copper finish from John Lewis adds an elemental dimension to your natural makeover and it’s a classic centerpiece for any late summer or autumnal social gathering. There’s something cathartic about gathering around a fire to drink hot chocolate and tell tall tales, so this type of product facilitates garden-based family gatherings all year round.
- Clay
Clay is another natural material that lends itself well to a wide variety of purposes.
And a few carefully placed clay garden ornaments look fabulously chic in a compact front garden – browse Etsy online for a range of lovely animal and abstract sculptures that will suit you perfectly.
If you don’t see anything that suits, remember that a cute and kitsch garden gnome can also provide a touch of personality to your home exterior and creates a positive first impression for guests.
- Stone
Perhaps no natural material is as solid and steadfast as stone.
But as well as being a brilliant building material for your walls, it also creates an excellent aesthetic for your driveway, where decorative gravels from Marchington Stone can be used to dynamic effect.
If the approach to your home currently consists of compacted dirt or tarmac, stone products like Scottish cobbles, red gravel or plum slate make it look much more attractive and elegant.
So ends our list, but please share your own tips on natural home exteriors in the comments section.
