Introduction
Whether you’re a homeowner or a business owner, you can always benefit from adding a walkway to your property. You can hire professionals for the job by searching for “paving companies near me”. Let’s check out a few reasons to install a walkway:
The Reasons
- Curb Appeal – You can increase your home’s curb appeal drastically with a walkway. When most people think about walkways, they think about function. However, it can do a lot to improve the overall look of your landscape. Apart from functionality, they add dimension, depth, and style. When someone visits your home, they look closely at the front walkway to make sure they don’t fall. That’s why the style and materials used for building your walkway can make a huge impact.
People are getting creative with their walkways instead of opting for the traditional straight lines made of paved concrete. The walkway can be curved to encircle your home and even elevated to add a sense of depth. It doesn’t need to be made of poured concrete either. You can build your walkway out of all sorts of materials including stone, bricks, and concrete pavers. These types of materials give you a lot of flexibility and allow you to make your walkway unique and stand out from the rest.
- A focal point for the landscape – As mentioned above, your landscape is mostly empty with a turf of green and maybe a small garden. You can spice things up with a walkway. A walkway doesn’t just look good but can make your landscape a lot more functional than you think. For instance, if you make a walkway around your garden’s veggie bed, the carefully constructed soil bed doesn’t need to be compacted.
When the soil isn’t compacted, you have less of a need to till it very often. The soil maintains its texture, allows proper drainage, and has enough room for the roots to breathe and stay healthy. You can get more bountiful harvests this way. Your walkway also allows you to direct visitors and guests around your property exactly the way you want.
For instance, your walkway can start near the entrance, curve its way around your premises going by the garden and then end at the patio. At night you can highlight the walkway with ground lights and that creates a mesmerizing effect. Walkways are extremely convenient since you, your family members, and guests don’t need to walk on the grass and damage the grass blades. A walkway can take a central role in your landscape in every way.
- Less stress on the pavement – Your asphalt or concrete driveway does most of the heavy lifting by tolerating tons of weight on it every day. Even if your driveway is guaranteed to last you for a very long time, all that stress adds up and it starts developing cracks slowly. While small cracks are easy to fill up, they aren’t great if you patch them up with an asphalt squeegee. On the other hand, large cracks need extensive repair work and maintenance that’s expensive.
When you have just one driveway or pavement it also has to take unnecessary stress from human traffic. A walkway helps relieve that stress. Moreover, a properly built walkway with the right materials can last much longer than a typical driveway. That allows you to get more mileage out of your driveway and reduce costs on maintenance.
- Safety – Walkways also make your landscape much safer for you and your family. They provide a safe path for everyone to navigate your lawn, garden, and other places in the backyard. With raised boundaries, a walkway also protects you from environmental challenges. Even when it rains, you don’t have to worry about slipping on the ground when you have a walkway finished with a gripping texture.
Raised skirts along the walkway also prevent water and dirt from flooding the walkway and provide you a safe path all year round. If your walkway has proper drainage, it can also redirect water away and prevent puddles that are difficult to get by. A walkway also allows you a guide path for installing ground lights. This lets you make your way around your property at night without unnecessarily bright lights.
- Increased property value – Walkways and driveways inevitably raise the value of your home since it brings a few quality-of-life changes and also adds property modifications that get added in the appraisal process. However, with the right kind of walkway, you can squeeze the most value out of your property.
The value of your home changes drastically with the type of material you use for building your walkway. For instance, if your driveway is mainly made of concrete, sand, gravel, and bricks the boost to your property value may not be significant enough. On the other hand, if your walkway is made of natural stone or colored and custom shaved pavers you can expect a handsome return on investment.
Apart from the materials, the shape of your driveway also affects value addition. That’s why you shouldn’t go for the generic straight walkway. Instead, you may want to add curves, angles, and design elements to give your walkway its distinctive character. You can also get stamped and textured pavers instead of regular-colored pavers to add to the design.
Among the design changes, the most significant one would be a custom-designed walkway made of pavers. Most contractors allow you to custom design your walkway with pavers. They are much more versatile compared to natural stone since they can have anything from your company logo to an illustration of your family. They can also be of any shape you want. This gives you a limitless opportunity to fuel your creative juices.
Conclusion
As you can see there are major benefits of installing a walkway on your property. It can improve the overall aesthetics and even add safety. You can search for “paving companies near me” to hire professionals for building a walkway on your property.
