Increase Home Value With Hardscaping

You've probably heard the terms landscape, softscape, and hardscape about your home's outdoor spaces. Those terms can be a little confusing, but in the simplest terms, softscape is the soft, growing, organic components of your yard. Hardscape is the hard stuff, such as brick, wood, concrete, stone, and synthetic materials, and landscape refers to the outdoor space and its components. Hardscaping is the transformational technique of integrating those hard materials with the softscaping and other physical aspects of your outdoor space creatively and artfully.

Adding these elements is a great way to emphasize and enhance your home's architecture, add functionality, and increase your outdoor living space, usage, and enjoyment of your property. Today's most popular services include patios, walkways, retaining walls, gazebos, pergolas, gardens, fire, and water elements. These features are popular for many reasons. First, there is simply nothing like the feeling of satisfaction of having a beautiful, functional yard space surrounding your home. It helps define and shape your land. These elements can also provide shade, security, and stability where needed. Overall, they beautify your entire property in a harmonized way. Because of these benefits, hardscaping is one of the most significant ways to increase the property value of your home and can boost your home's value by up to 20%, depending upon the features you choose.

There is an indisputable link between hardscaping and curb appeal. It has just as much visual impact as your house's physical appearance and is one of the first areas anyone looks at. Thus, curb appeal is crucial for making an excellent first impression on visitors—and prospective buyers when you intend to sell. You may add a wide variety of creative elements to your property, and those choices are only limited by your imagination.

Another consideration might be your budget. Fortunately, another terrific aspect of these projects are that they don't necessarily require a massive investment to achieve a good return. Here are five different projects that offer excellent returns:

• Pathways, Walkways, and Driveways: From stone to gravel, brick to concrete, adding paths, walkways, or a driveway around your property is a beautiful, useful way to define and shape your yard space. Using pavers returns almost 69% on your investment.

• Patios and Outdoor Living Areas: Expanding your outdoor living space with a seating or lounging area, an outdoor kitchen, or a simple gathering space for entertaining is always a great idea. Outdoor kitchens are exceptionally hot and trendy right now and feature prominently on many prospective buyers' wish lists. Patios are consistently one of the most desired projects overall and are a worthy investment at an ROI up to 80%. They also have an ROI of 55%.

• Water Features: Water elements like fountains, ponds, and pools have a classic, timeless appeal. The sound of water is soothing and calming, while the visual presence of water is as magnetic and mesmerizing as it is lovely. Water somehow draws us in. It's an element that works in any setting. Installing a sprinkler system can have a return of about 86%.

• Fire Pits: You might cringe a little when you read this, but fire pits are hot—and by that, we mean that they are in very high demand. Plus, fire pits offer one of the best ROIs of any hardscaping element. You can enjoy up to a 67% return.

• Outdoor Lighting: Nothing can set a mood quite like the proper lighting. Today's lights add style to function and brighten the night. Dimming capabilities and motion sensors are at the cutting edge of technology. It's no wonder that you can expect an almost 50% return on investment on your new system.

Once you've decided to add some hardscaping to your property, a bit of cautionary advice: utilize a professional landscaping service. DIY attempts sometimes fail and may devalue your home if implemented incorrectly. For best results, go with a pro. A pro can help you put together a great design, formulate a well-structured plan for your space, choose the most appropriate materials for your climate and your budget, and help you ultimately achieve the look you want.

In Scarborough, East York, and throughout the GTA, there is no better landscaping company than Luke's Landscaping. We are the top-rated and most trusted hardscaping specialists in the area, and we'd love to help you create your dream space. Contact us today, and let's get started.