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Facades
If you’ve chosen your favourite floor plan, it’s now time to decide on your dream facade. With hundreds of different facades available, you have a world of options when it comes to deciding on the perfect addition to your new Simonds home.
Create Neighbourhood Envy With a Facade Full of Street Appeal
If you’ve read our Hallway and Powder Room Blog, you’ll know the importance of creating a great first impression with the entrance of your home. But, before your guests even step through your front door, they’ll be greeted by your facade.
When choosing and designing the facade of your new home, you have the power to not only create a great first impression, but a lasting impact on friends, family and those passing by.
The benefits of a charming and timeless facade are well known in terms of boosting street appeal and resale potential. Over the last year and a half, many of us have spent more nights of the week walking around the neighbourhood, exploring what lies immediately beyond our front door. As we’ve had more time to stop and smell the roses, we’ve also had time to take note of eye-catching facades, and the features that make homes around us memorable. In short, the importance of street appeal has never been stronger.
While it’s handy to think of your facade as putting your best foot forward to others, it’s important to remember that it’ll be the welcome home that greets you as you pull into the driveway each night. It’ll also be the backdrop to all of your family’s big milestones and celebrations, remembered for the years to come in photos and Facebook albums.
From the first day of school photo to Halloween trick-or-treating snaps and shots of the youngest off to university with a jam-packed car, your facade is the perfect opportunity to bring your unique personality and style to life, while creating a sentimental backdrop for all of life’s big events.
Across Australia, we have over 230 facades to choose from, with each reflecting a different style and budget. When building your new Simonds home, you can rest easy knowing that you’ll have plenty of choice when searching for a facade that speaks to you. Some are offered as a standard inclusion with your home design and provide a classic and timeless look to your home. While others are a little bit more of an investment, but will be a sure-fire way to bring the ‘wow’ factor and take your street appeal up a notch.
Keep scrolling for all of our tips and tricks on how to bring street appeal to your new Simonds home.
Our Top Tips For Creating
the ‘Face’ of Your Home
Image: Be the talk of the street, with high contrast feature cladding and bricks. As seen on our Napier 53 featuring the Mavis facade, on display at the Woodlea Estate, Aintree, VIC.
Before we dive into some of our stand-out facades, we’re giving you our top tips and tricks for picking the right facade for your new Simonds home.
Tip 1: Read Your Developer’s Guidelines From Cover to Cover. Developers usually have a set of covenants and specific guidelines for the facades and external features that are allowed to be built in their estate. Ranging from colour choices, to different materials and even the location of utilities. This can be to create a sense of cohesion within the neighbourhood, or to even ensure that there’s a variety of different facades and looks from home to home.
For those looking to buy a block of land in an estate, it’s important to familiarise yourself with these developer guidelines before you do so. If you have your heart set on a certain colour scheme or look, you’ll want to ensure that it’s allowed in the estate that you’re looking to buy in. While these developer guidelines are out of our control, our Gallery Consultants will work with you across all fronts to try and bring your vision to life, while still adhering to all of the estate’s dos and don’ts.
Image: Subtle use of different textures and colours will ensure that your facade will have wide-ranging appeal. As seen on our Milton 23 featuring the Grant facade, on display at the Wickham Rise Estate, Yarrabilba, QLD.
Tip 2: The Big Question To Ask Yourself. When deciding on your facade, you need to ask yourself some of the big questions like; will this be my forever home, or will I be looking to resell in 8-10 years time? If you fall into the first camp, you can really bring your personality and unique style to the table, creating a facade that you love, even if it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. This could mean a skillion roof, or getting creative with feature cladding and colours. But if you know that this home won’t be your last, sticking to less polarising features is often the way to go for creating a facade that you know will be a crowd-pleaser.
Our New Home Specialists will take you through all of the ins and outs of creating street appeal with your facade. They know the local area and estates like the back of their hand, so they’re at the ready to advise on popular and timeless choices that prospective buyers look for. You’ll need to finalise your facade and any structural components with them before you head to your Gallery appointment, so it’s important to take your time and pick the right facade for you and your budget.
Image: White and timber delivers a stunning facade, that will you smiling as you come home each night. As seen in our Carey 23 display featuring the Angeles facade, on display at the Aura Estate, Baringa, QLD.
Tip 3: Be Prepared For All of the Elements. It’s important to remember that the facade of your home isn’t just a pretty face, it also has to be prepared against the harsh Australian elements. And decisions that you make early on, can have a huge impact on future upkeep. For example, painted external finishes are often a lot less maintenance compared to timber; and depending on your location, the orientation of your block and various other weathering factors, you might need to sand back and refinish any timber features every 12 months or so, to keep them looking in tip-top shape. So most of all, it’s important that you’re honest with yourself and how much upkeep you’re willing to commit to, as this will help you make decisions about your facade.
If you are building on the coast, or near any major rivers or lakes, you might want to consider investing in fittings like, marine grade stainless steel external light fixtures, which will fare better over the years in these types of environments. Your Gallery Consultant will be able to walk you through all of these details and decisions - both big and small - so that you can be confident that all elements of your facade will withstand the test of time.
Now, with the business side out of the way, it’s time to dive into some of our crowd favourite facades.
Image: Our breathtaking Moreton 23 proves that you don't need a double-storey home to command street appeal. As seen on display at Coomera Foreshore, Coomera, QLD.
Coastal and Cottage
Create an idyllic frontage, that’s worthy of a children’s storybook with a facade that embraces a laid-back lifestyle.
If you’re a fan of the more coastal-meets-cottage look, start exploring our QLD Forrest, NSW Hampton, SA Hermosa or VIC Nash facades. Our Moreton 23 display on the Coomera Foreshore features the Forrest facade and creates charm and character with Monier Concrete roof tiles in Babylon and weatherboards and render from Haymes Paint matched to COLORBOND® steel Shale Grey and Surfmist.
When choosing features and colours, it’s important to stick to the golden rule of facades by making sure that the inside and outside of your home feel like a continuation of each other. When getting started, it can be easier to think about your desired internal colour scheme first, and then carry this look and feel out to the kerb. This will ensure that you and your guests don’t feel jolted by different schemes as you step through the front door.
Image: Combine different grey hues to add interest and intrigue to your facade. As seen on our Haylett 28 featuring the Wollemi facade, on display at the Willowdale Estate, Leppington, NSW.
Sleek and Edgy
If coastal and cottage isn’t your style, the sharpness and sophistication of raked ceilings and edgy exteriors might be more up your alley.
When you’re walking around your neighbourhood gathering inspiration for your new home, start to think about all of the elements that come together to form your facade. Do you prefer any feature cladding or renders to be a high contrast colour or blended together as one, leaving the different textures to do the talking? While you by no means have to go into your Gallery appointment with all of your colour choices decided on, it’s helpful to start thinking about your broader vision, so that your Gallery Consultant can steer you in the right direction.
Image: Let the different textures in your facade do the talking. As seen on our Mebbin 25 featuring the Stirling facade, on display at the Newgate Estate, Tarneit, VIC.
If you can’t go past the idea of creating a dramatic, show-stopping street presence, then start exploring our SA Dewars, VIC Stirling, NSW Langhorne or QLD McKinlay skillion roof line facades. Our Mebbin 25 display at the Newgate Estate features the Stirling facade and perfectly captures that edgy look, while still allowing your chosen textures to shine. Get the look, with a COLORBOND® steel roof in Night Sky®, Austral bricks in Zinc and Praline, and render in Shale Grey Colorbond from Haymes Paint.
Be welcomed by the inviting Hampton facade on our Harrison 31, in the Waterford Estate, Chisholm NSW.
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Simonds acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn and work.