20 Driveway Landscape Designs For Maximum Curb Appeal

Landscape design usually focuses on front yard features like fences, gardens, or outdoor furniture, but a well-designed and good-looking driveway is worth its weight in gold—and curb appeal.

What is Curb Appeal Landscaping?

Curb appeal is all about the attraction and charm of a house when someone is viewing it from the street. Keeping the front of your home, particularly your driveway, clean, well-maintained, and attractive makes your home more welcoming and can do wonders to boost the value of your property.

Clever landscape design works overtime to minimize potential issues or eyesores while maximizing your home’s unique attributes and natural beauty. Long or short, driveways are the perfect canvas for stunning landscaping, whether simple or extravagant, creating a show-stopping entrance and lasting first impression.

We’ve shared 20 inspirational driveway landscape design ideas to maximize your home’s curb appeal.

20 Driveway Landscaping Design Ideas to Boost Curb Appeal

1. Adding Planters

Adding planter boxes to your driveway landscaping design is a low-maintenance option to add instant curb appeal. Perfect for beginner gardeners, planters are easier to plant in and water than traditional garden beds and are largely weed resistant, keeping gardening time to a minimum.

These round, patterned planters add a quaint and homey feel to this welcoming driveway, housing lush green shrubs which contrast with the dark stone driveway and highlight the elegant height of the surrounding trees.

2. Unique Pathway

Lead visitors up the garden path by adding a unique pathway to your front yard landscape design. This whimsical stone pathway uses different shaped and sized stones to take guests and visitors on a delightful journey through a lush green garden.

Discover more about The Patio Company’s stone masonry services.

3. Focus on Symmetry

Symmetry works wonders in landscaping. Embracing an even and balanced driveway design will make your home appear more regal, creating a sense of balance, uniformity, and intentionality.

This grand home uses symmetrical paver patterns flanked by evenly balanced patches of greenery, drawing the eye up the long pathway and ensuring the house takes center stage. If you’ve been considering landscape design, this is the sign you’ve been waiting for.

Contact us to find out how we can introduce symmetry to your grand home design.

4. Greenery All Around Your Home

There’s no better way to make your home a haven than to surround it with nature. Using greenery along your driveway ensures guests feel relaxed and zen before entering the front door. Take inspiration from this home, where a relatively short driveway has been transformed into a lush, green retreat.

5. Flower Power

Harness the natural beauty of brightly colored flowers to bring cheery energy and excitement to your driveway landscaping. Choose a color combination that complements and enhances the rest of the house and the front garden for maximum curb appeal.

This elegant circular driveway uses color to break up the wide gravel path, while the array of brightly colored blooms makes the circular driveway the centerpiece of this front yard.

6. Shrubbery

Shrubbery works overtime when it comes to landscape design. It provides excellent ground cover and attractive plant life and can also work as a privacy screen in an otherwise open space. Layering up shrubbery in different sizes and heights along the length of your driveway adds depth and interest to the street view of your property.

Lavender bushes work with other shrub varieties to flank either side of this driveway and add a gorgeous scent to a high curb appeal design.

7. Outdoor Lighting

Getting creative with outdoor lighting is a sure way to add instant curb appeal to your driveway landscape design. Full of practical benefits, adding lighting to the length of your driveway illuminates the way for visitors and family members while making it easy to distinguish the perimeter of your home. The right lighting is also an effective design feature, adding warmth to your home and highlighting the landscape design features that make your home stand out.

Cleverly positioned light accentuates features of this home’s long driveway, illuminating shrubs and a central water feature.

Inspired by this design? Create the perfect atmosphere with The Patio Company’s outdoor lighting designs.

8. Maintain the Garden

Boost your home’s curb appeal by keeping your garden clean, tidy, and well-maintained. Opting for low-maintenance plants will cut your pruning, trimming, and watering time in half without sacrificing aesthetics.

Perfectly maintained shrubs, bushes, and flowers line the length of this home’s driveway, adding instant character and interest to the street.

9. Use Hardscaping

Incorporating hardscaping into your driveway landscape design gives you endless options for creating unique and functional design features. Paving, retaining walls, fences and entrance columns complement each other aesthetically and perform practical functions to ensure your driveway is safe, easy to use and looks great.

A mix of pavers and gravel helps to break up this wide driveway, while small stone retaining walls help to keep grass clear of trampling feet and car wheels.

10. Think Through the Seasons

Let mother nature take the reins with your driveway landscape design by selecting plants that reflect the changing seasons. Deciduous trees will provide all the shade needed during the hot summer months before losing their leaves in winter to make way for light and warmth to creep through.

The stunning color of the trees lining this driveway instantly captures the eye of passersby, contrasting beautifully with the rustic stone columns and iron gate.

11. A Grand Entrance with Columns

Since ancient times, columns have been featured in some of the world’s most famous architecture, and what better way to add impact than by adding a pair of stone driveway entrance columns to your driveway entrance? Whether they serve a functional purpose or are purely for design, columns are an easy way to instantly mark your driveway entrance and guide any visitors or guests towards your home.

Two square, standalone columns break up this circular driveway, framing the colorful, flowering garden bed in the center of the drive.

12. Stone Walls

Adding a stone wall to your driveway design is an attractive way to mark the boundaries of your property and driveway. Different stones and textures will create different design aesthetics, but the key is to choose a material that enhances and flows with the rest of your house and the surrounding landscape.

Proof that good things come in small packages this short driveway uses a rustic stone wall to house garden beds and mark the perimeter of the driveway itself, adding instant curb appeal.

13. Modern Gates

L driveway gates provide additional security and privacy and an easy way to create a show-stopping street-facing design feature.

Bring a contemporary edge to your driveway design with sleek, modern gates. These large gates are softened by adding a modern curved pattern, contrasting beautifully with the strong lines and edges of the home behind.

14. Driveway Layouts

Get creative with your driveway layout to maximize the space available. Adding more garden space alongside your driveway looks great and gives you a whole outdoor room to relax in in the warmer months.

This home uses different paving materials to outline a unique layout, providing a side space for parking and framed by curved garden beds.

15. Patterned Paving

Paving is a cost-effective and low-maintenance covering for a driveway, but it doesn’t have to be boring—look at our driveway design services for proof of that. We can help bring your driveway paver design ideas to life.

This home uses a beautiful mix pattern of pavers to make a feature of the driveway itself, offsetting the clean lines of the building.

16. Ornamental Gardening

Lining your driveway with ornamental plants will instantly make your landscape design more attractive. While ornamental plants need a high level of maintenance, they act as charming and beautiful wind barriers and privacy shields, adding instant charm and curb appeal.

This sweeping driveway and lawn use a series of carefully maintained ornamental plants to create a unique design, with colored shrubs that mark the driveway and footpath.

17. Climbing plants

When space is an issue in your driveway landscape design, why not go up? Climbing plants are an easy way to add greenery and lush foliage to what might otherwise be a small space.

This postage stamp-sized driveway may not have room for lush garden beds, but by adding beautiful climbing roses to the garage walls, it still has a warm and welcoming feel to it—and no doubt smells amazing!

18. Succulents

Succulents are an excellent choice for those wanting to add low-maintenance greenery to their driveway design. Their hardy nature and low water needs mean endless options for including them in landscaping designs.

This driveway swaps out the traditional grass strip and maximizes this underutilized space with an overflowing garden of succulents.

19. Minimal

Keep your driveway sleek, clean, and uncluttered with a minimalist design. Sharp lines and flat surfaces will create an instantly modern aesthetic, requiring little upkeep and allowing other parts of your home and landscaping to take center stage.

This minimal driveway design allows the more raw and natural materials and hardscaping to shine, with the warm, redwood stairway feature contrasting beautifully with the adjoining driveway paving.

Boost your curb appeal with The Patio Company’s driveway design services.

20. Geometric Shapes

Swap out traditional driveway designs for geometric shapes. Relying on clean lines and organized forms, a geometric design creates a more formal aesthetic and instant intrigue from passersby.

This unique driveway design has embraced a flat aesthetic, allowing geometric grass beds and driveway layout to be the main player.

Let us help you renovate your driveway and boost your curb appeal. Contact us today to discover how we can transform your outdoor space into something special.