When Stewart and Karen Brown added a front porch to their 1931 brick home near Marietta Square they transformed a relatively plain facade into a far more dramatic one.
Stewart Brown, a retired retail manager, had lived in the home for almost 70 years. He grew up there and then moved away before inheriting the home when his mother died. Adding a front porch significantly changed how he and his wife interact with their neighbors.
“Because it’s on the front, it opens you up to passersby,” Brown explained. “We are a walking neighborhood. A lot of dog walkers and folks come by... and say hi and sit and rock with you.”
The Browns’ brick bungalow has a screened porch on one side of the house and a patio off the kitchen. “But neither one faced the front of the house,” he clarified. “Opening up a large area where people could sit and chat in the front really made quite a difference.”
“My wife’s out there every afternoon reading and greeting,” said Brown, who noted that in good weather the couple are on the porch every evening.
Savannah College of Art and Design president Paula Wallace quite literally wrote the book on front porches. Her book “Perfect Porches: Designing Welcoming Spaces for Outdoor Living” (2010) highlights porches from San Francisco to Savannah. For Wallace, porches represent a balm to the frenzied pace of modern life.
“The highest and best use of a front porch is to enable and encourage the art of conversation. We entertain ourselves with stories on the porch. We invite people in. We sit. We visit,” said Wallace, whose Brookwood Hills home in Atlanta features an inviting, homey porch designed by Wallace and her husband, Glenn. She recommends personal collections, like the vintage clocks she and Glenn collect, and weather-resistant curtains to add personality to porch decor.
“We’re in the midst of the Great Porch Renaissance,” Wallace said, “and clients want interior designers and architects to create intentional outdoor spaces — not just for homes, but in any and every kind of structure they might be designing: hospitals, corporate offices, retail spaces.”
Benjamin Burney, owner of the home building and renovation company Full Circle Homes in Marietta, built the Browns’ porch. “There’s very few things that can make that initial impact the way a front porch does,” he said.
It is critical when designing a porch that a homeowner consider the home’s overall look. “The most important thing is to scale it to the house and stick with the character of the house ... rather than trying to make it something it’s not,” Burney said.
One of the best features of a porch addition is its relative affordability. A porch greatly expands living space, but without the expense of a full-room addition. Burney’s porch additions range anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 and can feature a vast array of materials including PVC, cedar and cypress and — for more modern porches — exotic hardwoods like ipe and cumaru.
Sandy Barth, marketing director for Georgia Front Porch in Cumming, said porches — which range from $14,000 to $22,000 and up — give the homeowner more drama and bang for their buck. Though, in the past, Georgia Front Porch has tended to do more porticos, this spring the company has seen an uptick in porch requests.
Unlike porticos, “porches are different — it’s all about lifestyle. People want a place to sit, relax, socialize and enjoy watching their kids play in the front yard. They don’t want to pull out folding chairs and sit by the garage. They want a porch for shade and to put rocking chairs on — or even, the traditional Southern porch swing,” Barth said.
A more beautiful porch not only adds to the curb appeal of a home, it also draws you outside, engages you with the change of seasons and the life of the neighborhood.
If a porch addition is out of your budget, a porch makeover can make a real difference in the look and feel of your home.
Landscape architect Derrick Lepard of Cultivators Design and Landscape swapped out some uneventful Costco plastic picnic tables on his front porch facing Piedmont Park with a Moroccan-themed design scheme.
Lepard entertains a great deal on his porch, hosting parties or even enjoying meals at a long table on the front porch, where he can watch the passing parade. He has integrated oversized pillows for seating, colorful rugs and an array of metal lanterns to his front porch. Lepard added succulents and palms to continue the exotic North African theme.
“The porch was just a blank canvas. There was nothing there,” he said.
Lepard sourced his decor, he said, “on the cheap” from Ikea, thrift stores, Walmart and HomeGoods.
For Lepard, these sorts of porch do-overs allow the space to become an extension of your living space and reflect a new desire to make every inch of your home count.
“I think people are staying home more. So if they redo their porch it’s almost like a vacation for them without leaving their house. People really are using these outside spaces of their home more than they have been,” he said.
TIPS ON FRONT PORCHES
Georgia Front Porch senior designer Gary Zielinski and marketing director Sandy Barth offer these tips and trends in front porches:
● Consider what materials you will use and how they will affect the lifespan of your new porch. New composite materials for columns (PVC for square columns and fiberglass for round), fascia boards, etc. will greatly reduce any future maintenance or replacement.
● Assess the structural elements that are incorporated into the look of your house. For example, are there gabled peaks, curved or squared features? It’s best to re-create existing characteristics for the porch to maintain the charm and personality of the house.
● Lighting can go a long way toward creating an attractive and welcoming effect for your guests. Recessed fixtures, perimeter rope lighting and exterior up-lighting are increasingly popular. Keep in mind that low-voltage light systems are less expensive and more energy efficient and cast a warmer light.
● Look for a growing trend toward masonry floors in stone or brick.
● There is a current trend toward “no rail” porches. For porches that are 18 inches or less above ground, this is particularly appealing to homeowners because it offers a more open look to the home. Instead of your eye going to railing, you see the overall curb appeal and aesthetics of the home. And vice versa, no rail means a virtually unobstructed view of your yard and neighborhood.
