Well, your house might be located in a buzzing urban locality or a rural area, it may be an apartment, a farmhouse, or a villa, but you need to connect the entrance of your house to the main street nearby with a driveway. A driveway is mostly planned across the lawn in front of your house, from where your car needs to make its way through to your garage. However, while planning your house, lawn, or garden planning the driveway accordingly so that it justifies its functionality as well as adds to the first impression of your house is important. Robust, appealing, stylistic, and well-planned driveways not only enhance the ease of your day-to-day living, driving, and movement but certainly also adds to the value of your property.
Functionality and Appeal
While designing a driveway it is important to consider the practical requirements of the present family living, future scopes of increasing family members, frequency of visitors, etc. in houses where you have children, it is quite obvious that they grow up into teenagers they would have their cars, so which means added traffic on your driveway, need for broader driveway for two cars to pass by at a time. Besides if you have regular or frequent visitors, get togethers at your place, it is also essential to plan for added cars of your guests to be accommodated within your driveway, to keep the street in front clear.
However, all this practical functionality put together, it should not bar the appeal of the driveway into a chaotic and jammed one too. Driveways when planned and constructed thoughtfully can add to the elegance, appeal, and charm of a property.
Size and Number of Vehicles
If you own more than one car driven by other members of your family, you need to have a broader driveway. There should be essential provisions for two cars to move and move out at a time. Besides, not only the number of your cars. The position of your garage stalls but also the model and type of your car matter a lot when it is about designing the driveway. With an RV in your garage, you need a stronger driveway preferably with concrete padding on the sides of the garage. So, as per your cars, their number, and size your driveway could be from 10ft broad to 20 ft broader.
Accessibility
When designing a driveway, it should be planned accordingly to enhance accessibility ease, not to block the common entrance to the house, not to bar feet movement, and so on. Garage positions and the main entry gate of the property matter a lot while planning drive paths. Since beauty and visual appeal matters a lot to every person, driveways are mostly planned to beautify the property as well as with ease of accessibility.
In Sync With Street
While planning a driveway the street in front which you access directly when you are driving out or in from the house matters a lot:
- For a quiet street in front, a direct driveway can be okay, since there will be not much traffic or human movement all the time challenging back drives.
- However, if you are living on a busier street, you need to keep in mind that there can be a car passing by or children playing around the corner, and you need to keep your sight clear while driving out.
- Therefore, for houses located around busy streets, people prefer to have arc-shaped or T-shaped driveways, so that you get essential space for turning around and have a wide angle of view around the street to ensure safety too.
Plan Your Budget
One of the most vital factors which you should keep in mind while choosing the best driveways is to plan your budget beforehand. If it is your first time in deciding your budget factors for building suitable driveways now, then it is important get suitable quotes from more than two building agents at least. It would help you get a steady idea on finalizing the budget factors in the first place. That way, you would be able to settle for the best plans ever.
The best way to deal with such budget deciding factors is by having suitable spare spaces around your house. It would save you a lot of time, labor cost and extra expenses, if you have your personal spare space at home. That way, you would also be able to plan your own driveway design and perhaps work on the concreting factors with DIY formulas as well. However, before diving into the process, you should keep in mind that your driveways should be sturdy enough to take the loads of the following:
- Vehicle traffic
- Foot traffic
- Weather extremities
- Constant heat
Since, it is not everyday that you put forth money, energy, time, and effort to build a driveway, make sure that when you plan one it is robust, strong, made with durable material, and can withstand the climatic variations of your area. Consult with engineers and architects experienced and specializing in driveways to build not only a strong one but even an impressive one too.