Are straight lines ... out of fashion? Are they generally seen as poor design or unimaginative?

Here is the inspiration for our remodel:

And here is our house & front yard as they are today (again, construction is still underway):

Additional things will change in the future, like the existing stairs/deck that lead from the breezeway to the driveway. And again - this is a work in progress - I'm not looking for feedback on house/garage since we're working with what was here when we bought the place (I know the garage is ugly, we'll get to that later).

But what I could use feedback on is this ... do we NEED curves or can I just work with straight lines for the walkway to the porch & plants around the house?

Common wisdom is to "design it for your own taste" but on the other hand, if I'm missing something let me know. I like front yards that look neat & tidy as opposed to natural & rustic, and I think that's why the straight lines & right angles appeal to me. I'm just not seeing many good examples of this online.

No! Straight lines make sense here. A curve for the sake of a curve would look contrived.

I hope you realize how ridiculously skinny the walk is in your inspiration photo. You can do something better. A walk is better if it allows two people to walk to the house side-by-side. Also, the tree there is allowed to grow with limbs much too low.

It still doesn't mean that you can't use straight lines. I think what Woody described is a good balance - straight lines softened with rounded corners.

I'm no house designer, but I'm thinking it would be important to centre the door between posts, and centre the stairs on the door. Your walkway can go straight from there; if it's off-kilter it might bug you. It also might not - it's a bit more private if there are some offsets along the route.

If your arrangement of door/posts/stairs is centred, you can actually go either way with the walkway - straight or curved - and it would look perfectly logical. You have the advantage that since the property is not symmetrical, your landscaping need not be.

Karin L

And you have a great point about the path. Our stairs down from the porch will be 7' wide & I figured on a 5' wide path. I know that might seem TOO wide, but ... The steps are that wide because if we want a gate that matches the porch railing then we're limited to 3.5' or 7' in width. 3.5' seemed too narrow, so we're going with 7' wide stairs.

I want a gate on the porch so that I can have our dog on the front porch while I'm out there (or while I'm weeding in the front yard, once we have plants). In theory I could tie him, but then he'd just get the leash wrapped around porch furniture every 5 minutes.

Also - good point on the tree in the inspiration photo. I want to add some smallish ornamental tree (maybe a redbud) but will place it in between the large trees we have & the corner of the house. I'm thinking roughly where the pile of concrete rubble is in front of the dumpster (in the pic below look above the hood of the blue car).

This is a bird's eye view of what I think we'll do. The planting beds are as deep as the steps, so about 6'. That should give me room to put in some plants without encroaching onto the pathway. The back corner of the house is where the backyard fence ties in, so the planting bed can end abruptly there without looking weird.

And eventually we'll have to rebuild the steps to the breezeway (3-5 years from now):

Either way we end up with an area that will probably be a dead zone between the house & breezeway but maybe something will survive. Heck, previous owners put a daylily there and the poor thing actually blooms (barely). It looks miserable, but it blooms.

This is what we came up with. The beams in front of the porch are oversized (triple 2x8's that span less than 6') so we have a little wiggle room on where the support posts go. What do you think? With the sorta symmetrical layout & having the walkway go perpendicular to the inspiration photo, I think it might work out in the end. We weren't going to run the walkway to the street b/c we don't have sidewalks on our side of the road. They only run on the other side of the road (which means we don't have to shovel them so I'm not complaining).

It is common for houses to have centered porch steps that do not align with the front door. No one will give it a 2nd look. I find your "compromise" solution with the unbalanced porch opening to be much less acceptable. It's disconcerting. I think if you look around your neighborhood, you'll see lots of houses where porch and front door opening don't align.

Here are the 3 versions I tried. Option A is the one you have seen:

Option B has the porch columns & stairs centered, which I think is what you are suggesting?

Option C has the columns centered on the house but the stairs centered on the door:

Oddly, option B is the one I dislike the most. I think it's because the end post for the railing overlaps the door.

What's your perspective on it?

The fact that there are different amounts of blank wall beside the door makes it OK that the posts are different distances away. But anything that does not centre the stairs on the door looks awful to my eye. Have you been to the Home Dec forum with this? They can be pretty good with this sort of thing. Or one of the building forums? It's a crapshoot... in the end you have to come up with something that makes sense to you.

Karin L

I don't have a photoshop program but let me try to paint a written picture. Ignore that seeming offset and place your large columns with squarish bases 1) at both outside front corners of the porch (OK, that part is easy) and 2) on either side (5 foot on centre) of the lined-up front door, steps and walkway. So that's four in total - you might want two more against the house walls if you don't want to attach the side railings directly to the siding. Fill in with the railing of your choice. Do not add those extra lengths you show encroaching on the entranceway. Unless they were supposed to be stair banisters? If you do need an extra 36" tall post to support the longer stretch of railing, I would centre that in the middle of the wider, living room(?) window. Repeat on the other side if needed, although that's not so likely.

Once you get your exterior done, the porch furniture out and the landscaping completed, I'll bet that you won't notice any apparent offset unless you make a point of looking for it! Good luck on your project.