Lessons in curb appeal from a walk in LA

I went for a stroll and now I want to paint my house blue

On the last day that I was in LA I went for a walk in the hills where my brother lives. The sun was shining (of course, it was mid-March, why wouldn’t it be?) and I was in a t-shirt, armed only with my camera. What followed was an hour of constant camera clicking and mouthing of the words “wow” and “oh my god”, mainly so that anyone seeing me walking around taking pictures of home exteriors would hopefully interpret my facial theatrics as ‘she’s just a house obsessed nut job/tourist’, rather than ‘she’s casing homes for potential burglaries’. I realise I was asking a lot of my face, especially since I spent more time in the art room than the drama club at school.

It’s no exaggeration to say that almost every house was worthy of a picture, for one reason or another. Now, my brother lives in a particularly ‘arty’ part of LA, in the hilly area above the towny (also very arty) bit where I used to live, so it’s no surprise that the homes are interesting.

But as a current resident of Margate, arguably one of the most arty seaside towns in England, I rarely find myself snapping pictures of homes on my walks/runs/bike rides round town. There are some lovely homes around for sure, and some where you can tell the owners have made an effort to let their personality flow from the inside to the outside, but there are many more that are generic and plain.

My street in Margate is so devoid of excitement in terms of home exteriors that it makes me want to paint my house pink just to shake things up a bit. On the one hand, it makes sense that many of the homes on my LA walk looked so joyful, their residents influenced perhaps by the glorious, mood-boosting weather. I painted my beige exterior LA house pale green and purple 15+ years ago, so yes the weather makes you do crazy things! (Scroll for before and afters of that house).

But a friend I visited in LA (whose front door was pink) made the excellent point that the gloomier UK weather is all the more reason to add some mood-boosting colour and interest to our homes’ exteriors. Near the top of my own house to-do list is to clean up the exterior, not because of the anonymous letter posted by a ‘concerned neighbour’, (see below if you missed it before) but because:

a) It’s a bit grim arriving home to such a run-down exterior, especially when it’s so at odds with the improvements I’ve made inside, which in my opinion are quite nice :)

b) My home is also part of my business as it will be open to shoots, holiday rentals, workshops etc and rather than screaming “Shoot here!” Stay here!” “Work here!” the exterior currently whispers ominously “Someone may have died here…”

I’m not suggesting that there aren’t any UK homes with curb appeal. Try typing ‘colourful houses of Notting Hill” for some examples. Or as I saw when recently watching Banjo Beale’s BBC2 interiors show Designing the Hebrides, there are some colourful toy town ports in the Scottish Isles. And many more, I’m sure - please let me know in the comments some of your favourite areas for home exteriors.

But generally, a home’s exterior can get overlooked or lumped with the safe option - beige/cream/grey/white paint, a concreted over driveway, basic fencing with a wash of orangey creosote, a sensibly painted front door and a stretch of lawn with nothing planted (or worse, those purpley-grey shingles, also with nothing planted).

And I get it. Some people just want an easy to maintain exterior (does that explain the broken roof tile looking shingles for a lawn? I still think that’s no excuse!) And also, the inside is where we live, so why bother so much with the outside, some might say. And the truth is a lot of people struggle with how to bring life to their interiors so adding exteriors to the list is often too much!

I know that it will take time to get the outside of my bungalow looking lovely. Probably many years, and that’s fine because its in the fullness of time that a home really comes into its own, something I witnessed on returning to my old house in LA and seeing trees I planted 15 years ago and never got to enjoy, now towering high and looking glorious for the current owner.

I don’t want to paint the outside of my house until I replace the windows and front door, so instead I’ll scrub off the green algae stuff that creeps up every winter. And I’m not ready yet to think about garden design and layout and digging up new pathways, but I still haphazardly shoved some bulbs into the sad, bare patches of soil in the autumn so I’d get a bit of joy come Spring.

In the same way I style a shoot set or an interior, often working with a limited budget and only what’s on hand, there are simple and creative ways to add personality to a home’s exterior as well, some take time and money, others not so much.

The following are some of my favourites from my LA walks. I hope you enjoy them and feel inspired to bring a little more personality to the exterior of your home. xx

A tiled driveway wall that links to other tiled walls higher up. So clever and original, changing the entire facade, along with the cooler toned metal and the wood panelled exterior. Notice also the vines allowed to grow, softening a grey concrete retaining wall

Even if bold exterior colour isn’t your thing, a tiny streak of colour on the window frames goes a long way to add more character

Same again - a clean white exterior with one dark grey wall and a front door that pops. Modern, clean-lined and fresh but with a subtle nod to colour

I wish I got a better picture but some gardeners were watching me and I felt creepy. Just seen is an external flue painted bright orange against the green clapboard house and some boldly painted walls in the lower garden

The matt finish of the blue fascias give this home a cooler, more subdued feel than if they’d been painted glossy. The contrast of the grey-green trees (olives I think) and the hot pink flowers seems intentional

Pale blues are quite difficult to get right, whether for interior or exterior paints jobs, but I think they nailed it. I like the darker grey/blue window sill. Imagine if the shutter had also been a colour - dark pink, green, orange - and how that one simple and small addition could change the whole look. The white keeps it calming and cool.

I’ve always been partial to a black house or in this case, navy blue. Painting out everything - house, fencing, window frames, garden studio - in the same shade really makes a statement

This isn’t my personal favourite colour combination, but I still love that this house exists, flanked as it was by modern grey new builds lacking in much character

The most charming of Spanish cottages, but this could also work in an ordinary English 1930s detached or a dull bungalow like my own. If you have a red roof, consider that part of your overall palette - here the cream facade and green windows work beautifully with the red roof tiles

I don’t know the story with this house, but I do wonder if the owners inherited the grey painted exterior from the previous owner and added the pink doors as an easy uplift. A rich green would’ve been really lovely as well against the grey paint and the varying tones of wood

A lot of attention is paid to door numbers in this part of town, something I respect and aspire to. My friend Amy Exton is a mosaic artist in Margate and has been doing a lot of door number commissions lately, so I know people are thinking about it. How great is this blue against the taupe house? Never mind the view…

An interesting combination of colours here. Imagine the door less bold, how different the home would look. And matching the door and the numbers really works

NO excuse ever for the postman to deliver to the wrong address. Look closely and you’ll see the light over the front door is a vintage lamp suspended in a metal frame - genius and so original!

Too often people opt for basic fencing - it’s easy to source and tradespeople know how to handle it - but thinking a little differently can often save money and make your home stand out. Galvanised corrugated sheets are simply drilled into posts here

Ok, a little bit more labour intensive and niche perhaps, but what an impact. This was in Venice beach, home to very creative and now very expensive cottages

I love this so much. The mix of rocks and brick and simple horizontal fencing and vegetation. Call me crazy, but I don’t think it would be very difficult to build a wall like this, especially since the final look is, shall we say…relaxed. Then again it could be one of those situations where you work hard to make it look thrown together.

Venice Beach again, a home that I so desperately want to see the inside of. The mix of greens, blues and yellow are so well chosen. But look closely and the materials are simple. It’s the palette that elevates it. And the lush vegetation doesn’t hurt

Makes me want to learn how to weld (like my brother did, as mentioned in my last post). I really love the brutalist effect of the materials contrasted with the bamboo. Again, a case of someone ignoring the rules of convention regarding fencing

Simple horizontally installed fencing is made so much more special with an unusual metal garden gate backed with orange. I love the mystery of this house front - behind many of these gates are incredible homes, literally hanging on the sides of hills

Lastly, my brother’s home, painted a calming and quite modern taupe, but softened with salvaged doors and roughly finished window frames

My own house in LA, which I’ve shared before but I share again to show the power of both paint and planting to a home’s exterior:

Pixellated image of how it looked when I bought it in 2005

And now:

I painted the outside myself, only took a couple of days - the benefits of one story homes. And I planted every single tree and plant - it was a real joy to see it on my recent return. And a reminder that things take time to bloom

Lastly I leave you with this, the current state of my own home’s exterior and the reason I was so inspired by what I saw back in LA. We focused squarely on the inside for two years, as it was barely habitable and yet, inside is where we had to live! I’m still not in a position to focus entirely on the exterior but my LA walks gave me much food for thought for when I can.

I will probably do a quick fix to last a year or two until I can do more - just paint the windows frames and sills and scrub the exterior for now. Can’t wait to replace that front door one day! Apparently moving the grass is also my job now ;)

One day she will be majestic!

Bless ‘em. Little do they know they just make me want to grow them wilder.

If you got this far, thank you!