A simple welcome mat and a mailbox bearing your name just won't cut it.
Making your home's entryway both hospitable and a clear statement of who lives inside means starting at the walkway or even the curb, proceeding to the porch, carrying through the front door and continuing all the way into the foyer.
This movement from public toward private space prepares visitors, albeit subconsciously, for who and what to expect inside. So, how do you manage those expectations?
WALKWAY AND PLANTINGS
When planning your front yard, start with the walkway, says Mary-Anne Schmitz of Gardening by Design (gardeningbydesign.ca). Making it wide enough to allow two people to walk side by side (meaning 4½ to six feet) makes visitors feel welcome.
"If you have a small yard, remove some of the grass for a wider walkway and add more flower beds to soften the landscape," says Schmitz.
She suggests using an extension cord on the grass to design a walkway with an interesting shape.
For plantings, Schmitz lets a home's interior guide the exterior. "If I see a lot of decorations inside a client's home, then I know they'll like the cottage look outside: not too much pavement and lots of different coloured plants."
Have you recently moved into a new, leafless subdivision? Start by adding something permanent such as perennial flowers to the front yard: beautifying that semi-public space will increase your sense of rootedness in your new community.
Good lighting adds nighttime drama to plantings and the rest of a home's exterior while making it easier to navigate entranceways.
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PORCH
Front porches let homeowners engage with the neighbourhood while retaining a sense of privacy.
Ottawa architect Jane Thompson has seen the popularity of porches spike for both custom-built and renovated homes.
"A house looks very stark if there's no transition between the street and the inside," she says.
Whether rambling and traditional or sleek and modern, she says a porch's roofline helps draw the eye to the front door beneath it. "If you have a hip or a low roof, then you could have a gable roof for the porch with some nice detail on its front."
Making the columns that support that roof wider than they need to be makes the entire porch appear more substantial.
Roofed front porches are showing up regularly in production homes, as well.
That change from the flat-faced suburban homes of the mid-20th century is partly just design evolution, says Catherine Shea, Min-to Communities' vice-president of marketing and sales.
"Today's homes have more dimensions like peaks and rooflines. They're designed with more attention to the streetscape."
Porches also respond to a homeowner's wish to live more in their front yard, she says.
In fact, City of Ottawa guidelines on low-rise infill housing issued last year encourage architectural details such as porches that "promote street-oriented interaction."
John Liptak of OakWood Renovation Experts (oakwood.ca), which won an award for a front entryway at the 2012 Housing Design Awards, says neighbourhoods often have unique porch styles. The Glebe, for example, favours traditional brick columns topped with fluted wood columns that support the overhang.
"We do a lot of porches in the $40,000 to $50,000 range," he says. Starting price for a front porch is around $15,000, and they can run over $60,000.
Porches are easy to dress up. A runner beckons visitors more than a simple mat. Chimes (Ritchie Feed & Seed has a good selection) induce a sense of peace. A pot of annual flowers adds inexpensive, summer-long colour to even a plain porch.
FRONT DOOR
"Sometimes you walk up to a house and you don't even have any idea where to enter," says Chuck Mills of Chuck Mills Residential Design & Development (cmillsdesign.com).
He means it literally: He once revamped a cottage with two front doors, one to the left and one to the right, with no indication of which was actually the entrance. It wound up high on his fix-it list.
Doors - traditional or modern; steel, fibreglass or wood; with frosted, stained or clear glass - not only signal a home's entry point, but are also what a visitor looks at while waiting for you to answer the doorbell. They create an image of who you are.
So they merit attention. New homes usually have acceptable entry doors, certainly better than the nondescript slabs that buyers got in the 1950s and '60s.
If you want to replace a door with a new steel or fibreglass one, expect to pay $800 to $1,000 including installation, says Liptak. Solid wood doors including high-end hardware run $3,000 and more. Steel and fibreglass doors, available in multiple styles, are about equal in durability and insulating value. Fibreglass doors often have an imitation wood grain pattern.
Wood doors need maintenance, like an occasional coat of sealer to protect them from moisture. They can dry and split if exposed to intense sunlight for long periods.
Give punch to a door and pique visitors' curiosity about who they'll meet inside by picking a vibrant colour such as bold burnt orange or rich purple that contrasts with the rest of your home. Just remember that colours look less intense outdoors than indoors, according to the helpful door-painting guide at homehardware.ca. Foyer
Although inside the home, the foyer is still part of the entranceway, the final step in the public-to-private transition. It needs to be separate from, yet part of, the rest of the interior.
If you have a very small foyer with two doors - a feature typical of older Westboro homes, for example - remove the inner door, says Mills. What you'll lose in energy efficiency in the winter you'll make up for in natural light and a sense of roominess.
Susan Phillips of Spotlight on Decor (spotlightondecor.com) suggests painting a small foyer in a light colour such as pale green or cream that matches a piece of furniture or an accessory elsewhere in the house but is different from the home's other walls.
"That defines the foyer but still links it a bit to the rest of the house," she says.
Larger areas can be painted in two complementary colours with one of them matching paint in the living room or even a bedroom. A chandelier - Phillips likes inexpensive but eye-catching ones from thrift and big-box stores - also works well in the foyer.
LIGHTS
Getting you and visitors safely and pleasantly from the outside to the inside of your home is No. 1 when it comes to exterior lighting.
That means at least a well-lit walkway and front entrance. Visitors shouldn't have to ask themselves, "Where do I enter?" says Bruce Morton of Ottawa Landscape Lighting (ottawalandscapelighting.com).
He suggests moving beyond the purely utilitarian by adding, for example, some simple lighting to show off your landscaping or the elevation of your home.
A basic package of eight to 10 lights, including installation and automatic controls, would get all that done for about $2,500 to $3,500. After that, you can go nuts with up-lit and down-lit trees, silhouetting and more.
A common mistake, says Morton, is random lighting scattered in front of the house that fails to tie landscape and home into one. "You'd be better to concentrate on just one area and do a really nice job."
If you're into DIY, Ottawa's Del-phiTech (delphitech.com) sells low-voltage exterior LED lighting systems that plug into an outlet so you don't need an electrician. The company provides design services, too.
