Walk This Way: Designing the Perfect Path
Walkways are the first step toward your dream home, as well as the path that leads you and your guests to your home, around your home, and to your backyard, pool, garden, or anything else situated on your landscape. Some homeowners are unaware of the importance of walkways or neglect to consider their walkway options. Not only do walkways add to your home’s curb appeal and serve as a guide through your outdoor space, walkways can be great design pieces and really add some much needed style points to your home’s exterior.
Shaping Your Walkway
While your home may be designed solely with straight lines, your walkways don’t have to be. Like clay tiles for roofing, curved and other shaped walkways can give your home’s lines some much needed variety. A curved walkway flanked by tall flowers and vegetation can hide where your path leads and add some mystery to where it ends, bringing an element of fun into your yard.
Consider Size
Can you easily fit on your walkway? It sounds like a silly question, but it is something homeowners should think about. Nothing is worse than trying to walk past a beautiful bed of rose bushes, only to be smacked in the face by a thorny branch. A walkway should be wide enough for you to stroll down it without knocking into your surroundings or struggling to keep your footing. Front walkways tend to work best when they are wide enough for two people to walk beside each other.
Leading the Pack
Walkways aren’t just meant to keep your shoes clean as you walk, they can also be utilized to lead people around your home at your desired pace. Planting flowers, placing sculptures, mixing materials, alternating patterns, angling stones or wood along your walkway, building water gardens, or adding other scenic elements to the space adjacent to your walkway can give your guests decorations to stop and admire along their path. What is the point in having a beautiful home and outdoor space if no one takes the time to stop and observe your hard work?
Materials
Materials that tie into your house are a great way to compliment the design of your home. Conversely, a material that works in contrast to your home can offer a striking and welcome juxtaposition. Materials for walkways include, but are in no way limited to, wood, stone, gravel, and even mulch. Yes, mulch can be used as a walkway material, and doing so is a great way to accentuate a natural, garden centric landscape.
Plant Life
Much the same way that gardens bring life to a landscape, they can do the same for your walkways. Lining walkways with flowers and other plants is a splendid way to add texture, fragrance, and whimsy to your landscape. If you would like to up the fragrance factor, while having plants you can cook with, herbs, such as rosemary and thyme, are great for lining a path and smell amazing.
Have an outdoor space that is more hardscape than landscape? By using planters filled to the brim with flowers or other vegetation, you can still work in some natural elements. Also, placing interplanted sections of grass or moss between stones along your walkway add a natural interest and an intriguing alternation from hardscape to organic materials.
Remember…
At American Deck & Sunroom, we don’t build houses. We don’t just build walkways. What we do is design and build beautiful outdoor spaces…extensions of your home that flow with your existing property and architecture. And because we specialize, we go beyond the, “If you can dream it, we can build it,” catchphrase often quoted. After nearly 20 years in business and nearly 13,000 designs and counting, we have the experience to design outdoor spaces you’ve never even dreamed possible.
Our best credentials remain our list of satisfied customers. Though our projects are concentrated in Lexington & Louisville Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, we have projects completed from Arkansas to Rhode Island and from Dallas to Green Bay. Our custom decks, designs, and our commitment to excellence are second to none.
We only have two rules: our designs will look like they belong with the architecture of the house, and we build anything but square decks. Our goal is to go beyond what you’ve dreamed to create a unique space unlike any other. What are you waiting for? Contact us today!
