When we talk about taking care of our home, we typically think of things like painting the house, mowing the lawns, planting flower gardens, trimming hedges, sweeping the sidewalks, painting the fence and more. Many of these aspects that we consider to be basic care are entirely cosmetic in nature, yet they seem to be as crucial to taking care of our home as any structural care. Throughout our history, people have decorated their homes, from painting animals on our cave walls to building statues and creating large, symmetrical buildings in ancient cities, to painting our shutters today, mankind has always taken the extra step to create beauty in our homes.
Aesthetics has an effect on us. It gives us the chance to impose our own order to the universe and creating an ordered comfort to our environments. When we make choices about where to live, where to shop, and where to eat, the curbside appeal of the places we see has a significant impact on our decisions. You wouldn’t decide to go to a diner with peeling paint, a littered store front, and an overgrown landscape. If they don’t care about their location, why would they care about their customers?
Even in industries where the look of a location has very little to do with the product itself, such as a mechanic or gasoline station, the aesthetics of a place matter when people decide whether to go somewhere. Curbside appeal makes us think of security, safety, and cleanliness. We don’t want to go somewhere we don’t feel safe, or where we don’t think that they care. It is an instinctive factor that we may not even consciously consider, but it is a major factor in our decisions.
So why do we take the time to sweep our front porch, plant flowers around the front sidewalks, wash our windows and paint our front door? By enhancing the beauty in our environment, we appeal to a deeper psychological need – an innate instinct to seek comfort and safety in our homes. It is in our nature to seek symmetry, beauty, and comfort.
We will always look at our homes as our place of refuge – our cave of safety. So we make our houses more beautiful, and we take the time to increase our curb appeal, because these are the things that make us feel at home. When we are considering buying a home, people will be drawn to the curb appeal of the house. No one just goes shopping for a home. If the buyer can see the love and care that go into the house before they ever go through the door, they already know they are going into a home.