A backyard is an escape. Your front porch is quaint.
And so goes the traditional thinking between the big dream splendor of a backyard patio in contrast to the essential role a front porch plays in first impressions.
A backyard is a blank canvas of year-round entertaining and recreational possibilities. A front porch should be inviting and welcoming, but it can aspire to something more than simple curb appeal. It also can be an equally attractive outdoor space for refreshing multi-season calm and relaxation.
Consider these 5 customization ideas for adding beauty, charm, and usefulness to your custom home’s front porch.
Lighting
The ideal lighting on a front porch can emanate an attractive glow that exudes warmth and highlights the depth of smaller spaces. While front porch lighting is often chosen to be more utilitarian for safety reasons, the right lighting scenarios can be bright enough to feel welcoming and safe. Dramatic oversized light fixtures can help add a stylish statement to amplify curb appeal. And it’s OK to choose front porch lighting fixtures that are different from the others on your home’s exterior, the goal is lighting choices that shine brightest in their position, not to match.
Columns
Front porch columns are a great way to add a bold and refined statement to your custom home’s exterior style. Columns can be constructed of wood or stone with each material possessing a unique pillared expression – graceful, stately, grand. Columns are wider than traditional porch posts and engineered to carry more of a load often used in larger front porch designs. The play between column color and material in harmony with porch ceilings and floors can effortlessly bring the atmosphere from your home’s interior out into the world.
Porch Posts
Front porch posts are smaller in diameter and appearance than porch columns. Posts do well with supporting smaller-sized porches; their more delicate shape also allows them to show up with a more modern sensibility. Alternatively, a porch post’s subtle lines carry a heavy aesthetic lode while being ideally suited for attached railings.
Adding railing notes to columns can enhance curb appeal and the visual interest of the front of your house. You can do this in various orientations and colors to best match the house design.
Horizontal railings
Vertical Wrought Iron with columns
Painted white spindles with posts
Ceilings
More so than any other element, the ceiling on your front porch can play the role of a seamless bridge from your home’s interior to its exterior by way of color, texture, and material. Each of these variables can also influence the design’s sense of space and shape as well.
When wood is part of tongue and groove ceiling construction it is also extremely durable in areas that have no room for imperfection like those exposed to seasonal extremes. Knotty pine ceilings achieve a classic look that benefits more formal and approachable design motifs equally.
Beadboard is a low-maintenance, low-cost alternative to other ceiling options that still maintains an elevated and even classic look. Depending on how it’s incorporated into the design, beadboard can play a very bold hand in your front porch game.
Fiber Cement soffit/ceilings offer a clean smooth modern look to go with the rest of the house when fiber cement is featured on the exterior.
Depth
You’re not wrong in questioning the shallow limitations of the modern front porch. That’s because depending on what region of the country you live in, most homes built today have smaller front porches than ones from 50 years ago. Modern home construction trends have turned our attention towards spending more time in the privacy of our backyards and less in the front. To create a large and convivial space for enjoying coffee at sunrise or bringing together neighbors for an impromptu happy hour, you will need at least 6 feet in depth for chairs or smaller furniture and closer to 10 feet in depth for a table. Be sure to talk with your builder if you’re going to want electrical outlets for added lighting and entertainment activities.
If you’re considering building a custom home, it’s because you’re aspiring to do more than purchase an existing home built to someone else’s specifications. Our design experts believe every room in your house and every space outside of it, should achieve its full potential as a part of your dream home.
Come talk to Schumacher. Your custom home journey begins on the front porch.
About Schumacher Homes
Schumacher Homes, based in Canton, Ohio, is America’s largest custom homebuilder, with operations in 23 locations in 11 states across the country. The National Housing Quality award winning company has built over 20,000 homes, customized to fit each family’s lifestyle, since its founding by Paul Schumacher in 1992. Schumacher Homes takes each customer’s inspiration and gives it a home. Each Schumacher Homes location includes a one-stop shopping design studio and model homes displaying the latest in architectural and product trends.