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




















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:
And now:

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.

If you got this far, thank you!
Your posts are both inspiring and at the same time real and relatable. I have all your books. Confession, some I’ve bought twice thinking they were new, only to find out just the cover was different. I still have them all. 😉 I consider your posts now as mini books but still look forward to the arrival of yet another volume of your humor, realism, and knowledge. Thank you for pleasant moments of your thoughts.