Nothing dramatically affects the look and feel of your home more than the materials you choose for your exterior. Pick the right siding and your home gets a fresh, inviting look that will leave your neighbors and visitors impressed. The wrong siding, on the other hand, can leave a home looking dull and forgettable.
Siding options for homeowners include dependable classics like vinyl and wood, to modern, tech-inspired materials like steel. All of these materials come in a range of profiles, colors, quality, and finish.
It’s typical to see uniform colors and materials on a home’s exterior, but sometimes typical is boring. One of our favorite trends is the use of different materials for your exterior. Using different siding materials gives your home a fresh, modern look, and can even help you save cash. Because you can apply more affordable materials on less-visible parts of your house while using high-value products on more visible areas, this trend is both visually appealing and can be very cost effective.
One of our favorite trends is the combination of stone and steel. These materials have been used as siding for homes with impressive results for some time now, and we’ve found that they complement each other perfectly. Steel siding is durable, practical, and comes in a wide variety of profiles and colors. Combine the sleek, crisp look of steel siding with a more natural stone element, and you’ve got an exterior worth talking about.
Your entryway is the home’s focal point, and if you want to make a strong statement, applying a mixture of stone and steel siding here can make a big impact on your visitors right away. And because the entryway area of your property takes up less material than an entire exterior, adding more costly stone features won’t blow all of your home improvement budget.
The color that you choose for each of these materials will also impact the overall look of your entryway. Natural colors can make for a warm entrance to your home, or pick colors with a high contrast to make your entryway really pop.
For a storied home, using different materials for the exterior of each floor could be just what you need in order to give your home the dynamic look you’re after.
You could use a stone fence on the ground floor and steel siding to distinguish the upper floor. The contrasting materials adds visual interest, and will make your home stand out on the block.
Instead of going with a uniform color for the stone-sided bottom, you can opt for a combination of different color accents that complement each other, such as beige, brown, or red. For the steel-sided top floor, consider vertical siding panels that draw eyes skyward, making your home seem taller.
While the natural look of stone is a welcoming and gorgeous feature on an exterior, using stone for your entire home gets expensive.
Some homes feature stone on the front of the home and use steel siding on the less-visible sides of the house; this means you’ll get the durability and sleek look of steel siding, without overshadowing the appeal of a natural stone exterior on the front. Maintain a consistent feel with your color scheme by opting for coordinating colors, or highlight the look of the stone at the front of the house by using darker tones in the steel siding.
Going with a stone veneer panel can be a good way to showcase your creativity without using a lot of stone. This follows the “less is more” mentality to ensure the stone and steel don’t clash. If you are only covering a small area of your home, such as the chimney or around the garage door, choosing a natural stone panel could be a great aesthetic look.
Your home is a representation of your style and personality; let your creative side shine! By using different materials, colors, and textures on your home, you’ll stand out from the rest of the neighborhood.