Introduction
Driveway design is always crucial for your home. When a driveway is well-designed, it can help maximize the curb appeal and tone of your home. If you need to repair your old driveway or build a new one you can search for “paving companies near me” and hire professionals for the job. Let’s check out how you can design the perfect driveway with functionality and longevity.
Tips & Tricks
- The basics – A driveway design consists of a few basic things. An entry and an exit point, a parking zone, a movement zone, the right materials, and finally pedestrian safety and visibility. First of all, it’s very important to check on the road requirement for your driveway. If your home is accessed by a single-lane road, then it’s important to make visibility a priority and have the driveway built to code without violating any safety regulations.
You need to make sure that the driveway allows you to turn your vehicle 180 degrees so that you don’t need to go in or out of your property in reverse. Apart from vehicular turning circles, you need to contact local authorities so that you don’t break any safety guidelines and build everything to code.
- Importance of entry and exit – When you’re building a new driveway, you have to work with what already exists. That means you’ll probably keep your existing entry and exit points and may add one more. Try to visualize yourself and your guests arriving at your property and proceeding on the driveway. Try to figure out what you want to see when you reach home. Is there a favorite part or feature of your home that needs to be visible and in focus when you enter the driveway?
Try to position the driveway entry point in such a way that it highlights the best external features of your home. You’ll also need to figure out the vehicle’s journey from the entry point to the parking zone. Most people don’t have giant garages and if there’s no provision for parking on the street, the guests need a place to park their vehicles.
Finally, you’ll also need to map out a pedestrian route to your home. If you have a large property, you also have the luxury of building an open expanse with structured planting. If your property is on a slope, you can have a twisting driveway with hedges, shrubs, and perennials on different levels.
- Width of your driveway – The width of your driveway is very important for numerous reasons. That’s because the driveway width decides the type of vehicles that can enter your property and it also decides how much space is left for the lawn, garden, and other such landscape features. The standard width of 10 feet should be enough to allow in a conventional pickup truck or a large SUV.
Anything less than 10 feet would be very problematic for many drivers. Even if you have a small vehicle, an 8- or 9-feet driveway requires you to be extremely careful and makes you prone to hitting the driveway edges. If you plan to drive trailers and RVs into your property, make sure that the width is around 12 feet or wider.
Parking space also needs to be accounted for when you consider driveway width. To park and move the vehicle out of your property safely, you need to make sure that each vehicle gets around 10 feet by 22 feet of parking space. That means if you’re planning to have guests and have around 2 extra vehicles parked in your home, the driving zone needs a width of at least 20 feet for sideways parking. For bigger vehicles, the dimensions need to be larger.
- Pedestrian safety – Your driveway doesn’t just need to be functional and practical, but safe as well. If your driveway opens into an intersection, you need to think above pedestrians and bikers. That means minting of merging your driveway into the road, adding a curb or bumps to slow down the vehicle. This increases safety for both people walking and biking outside the property and your kids who may be playing on the driveway. Bumps also make you more vigilant about speeding vehicles.
If the entry and exit points in your driveway are too tight, consider vehicle turntables. That means the driveway needs to enter your home and allow a large circular path for turning the vehicle 180 degrees. This way you’ll never have to enter or exit your home in reverse gear and always have your eyes on what’s important.
- Other activities – While designing your driveway, you also need to consider other activities. Make sure that delivery trucks and cars can enter and exit your property easily. You may need to widen a section of the driveway as it enters your home so that postal and delivery services can enter your home and deliver packages without a problem. If you don’t have a garage, consider adding a charging point on your shaded parking spot for electric vehicles.
- Materials – To make your new driveway last long, nothing’s more crucial than the materials. If you’re on a tight budget and can’t spend more than single digits on each square foot of the driveway, then you have to choose concrete. While asphalt is dirt cheap, it requires a lot more maintenance and acres. Repairs also turn out ugly.
However, if you can spend more, it’s best to build your driveway with permeable stone or concrete pavers. They are cheaper in the long run since they allow for easy and swift repair and also allow for a lot of customization.
Conclusion
Driveway designs don’t need to be complicated and can be nailed very easily with the above-mentioned tips. If the design is solid, the driveway will last you for years and will look fantastic. To get a new driveway built for your home, you can search for “paving companies near me” and hire pros for the job.
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