Improving your driveway can definitely improve the look and style of your house. But it’s not always easy to get a really nice looking driveway. Sure, you can get asphalt or concrete, but those aren’t interesting looking. What do you do when you’re looking for a unique driveway? Well, you should be looking at paver driveway ideas. After all, driveway paving can be unique and a lot of fun.
What Are Some Paver Driveway Ideas?
There are plenty of paver driveway ideas that you should be looking at. After all, you want to make sure your driveway looks unique. If you can’t get something unique you’re definitely not going to want to spend extra, right? With driveway paving, you can create your own unique pattern for your driveway. Pavers are available in all different colors, styles and more. They can also be arranged in a variety of different patterns to improve the look and style of your home.
You want to look at different options and see what you can do with them. Don’t be afraid to mix and match a range of different pavers to create something different with unique driveway ideas. What’s really nice about these is that you can pick up your own favorites and then work with them from there. You can arrange everything for yourself or you can even hire someone to create a unique and specialized options. That’s going to make an amazing opportunity for you and your family.
Why Do You Want Paver Driveway Ideas?
One reason to get paver driveway ideas is to improve the look of your home. You’re going to have something that catches people’s eye when they show up and that’s definitely going to be important for you. Who doesn’t like to impress people at least a little bit? It may cost a little bit of money to do, but it’s going to give you big results in the end. That can definitely be great. Impressing people also will continue for a long time, because those pavers are going to last a very long time.
You’re also going to have something that adds value to your home. If you don’t go ahead and personalize your driveway too much (which some people do). You want to make sure you steer clear of initials or anything too specific to you. These things are great when you’re planning to stay in the house. They’re not so great if you’re thinking you’ll want to sell. After all, what is someone else going to do with your initials paved into their driveway? A unique design might get them interested. Someone else’s name is definitely not.
Types of Pavers
So what are your options when it comes to your paving driveway? Besides just the colors and sizes or shapes of the pieces, what do you really have to choose from? You can choose between three standard materials to create the pavers out of and one added option for that pavers driveway. It’s important to note that each of these options comes with the same options in them, such as color and style. The differences, however, are still important to at least look at before you make a set decision.
Stone Pavers
The first of your options are stone pavers. These are made by nature rather than being manmade, which means that you’re going to get a whole lot of variety here. Each of the stones may be polished, cut, shaped or otherwise molded to fit a specific style, but its color is entirely natural. They can be quite expensive for your pavers driveway, since they need to be harvested from the ground and then molded into the right shapes and sizes to create your stone driveway. Not all of them will even be molded in any way, however, and you may find stone pavers in completely natural shapes which require fill to be used around them for a flat look in your stone driveway.
Unfortunately, even at a higher cost they’re not very strong or long lasting. It’s going to depend on the specific type of stone you’re using as to what it can do. Granite, for example, is a strong paver that you could use in a driveway. Marble, on the other hand, is quite weak and would definitely wear far too quickly for use in a driveway. Many other types of stone, like limestone and sandstone, are the same way. For the most part, what this means is you’ll want to get stone pavers for lighter traffic areas rather than your driveway ideas.
Concrete Pavers
Concrete pavers are made with natural and raw materials that are mixed together from cement, aggregate, pigments and dyes to get a variety of different colors. A concrete driveway paver also comes in different sizes and shapes like other pavers. All of this is done at a manufacturing plant so you’re not actually getting something natural. You may also find color sealants in or on this type of concrete driveway paver to make sure that the color they are when you get them is the color they’ll be for an extended period of time. Concrete driveway pavers can also be dyed a number of different colors to get a very unique setup for your driveway or anywhere else you want.
Large concrete pavers are the least expensive option when it comes to these options and they’re actually quite strong at the same time. You can use concrete driveway pavers for just about anything, including your driveway. This is great because you have an inexpensive choice that still provides you with a whole lot of quality. You’ll be able to put them just about anywhere and use them extensively. This is important if you have a lot of high traffic areas that you want to decorate or enhance. The large concrete pavers will absorb just about anything and make sure that you have a long lasting driveway at the same time.
Brick Pavers for a Brick Driveway
One of the more common styles of pavers are brick pavers, which come in the middle when it comes to cost with all the same options as either of the other styles. These pavers are made with clay and shale that’s mixed together at a manufacturing plant. As they’re heated together they start to turn colors, which is how you get the natural look of brick. Because this is done through heating and not through dyes you won’t have to worry about those paving bricks losing their color over the short term.
They will start to fade eventually, but it takes a lot of time for that. Still, you’ll have different color options that occur naturally and you’ll have a really strong product at the same time. These brick pavers can be used for just about anything because of their longevity. They can also add a little bit warmth and comfort to your overall look and your entire home at the same time. Paving bricks can also be a great choice as accent pieces or to improve the look of gardens and a whole lot more. Where other types of pavers are less common for this, bricks are often used in a variety of different ways including those brick driveways.
Permeable Pavers
If you’ve never heard of permeable pavers you are definitely not alone. Many people don’t know what these types of pavers are, but they’re definitely something you should consider for your home. Permeable pavers are one of the best driveway paver ideas because they absorb moisture. This means that there’s less water running over the top of the pavers. As a result, you’re helping the environment when you use them and you’ll have less pollutants getting through to the water sources around your home. Instead, the water goes through the paver and into the soil that’s directly beneath them.
Who Uses Driveway Pavers?
So who exactly is using these types of driveway pavers? A number of people are actually doing it and they’re loving the way they look. You’re traditionally going to see more of this style of driveways in the southern parts of the country. They’re not as common in the northern states but they’re definitely starting to spread a little bit further. After all, these are very stylish and elegant design pieces to help make your house look even more amazing. For people in warmer temperatures, they are definitely going to be a great way to do just that.
It’s likely because of the colder temperatures that people in northern states tend to avoid using these types of pavers. After all, the cold temperatures in these areas can make it difficult for softer materials to last. Asphalt driveways are common because they do well in the freezing temperatures, especially when they go from freezing to thawing and back and forth throughout the seasons. Asphalt can last through this without any problems but pavers can be a little more difficult or may have a little more difficulty with it. It can result in some damage and wear if you aren’t careful.
How to Install Driveway Pavers
If you want to get paver driveway ideas you definitely want to take a look at how they’re going to be installed as well. After all, the installation process is about figuring out how to arrange everything properly. This is part of how you’ll come up with the designs and the pieces that you need. First you have to look at the options as we already mentioned previously. At that point you’ll be able to start working on the design that you want and you can see what’s all going to work together for that design. Whether you create the design yourself for a DIY driveway, or not, you want to have an idea of what it’s going to be.
Once you’ve done this you’ll be able to get started on the installation process. If you’re going to be installing the pavers yourself and executing your own paver driveway ideas you need to have a really good plan and you need to have all of the materials as well. The materials are going to be extremely important and will include not just all the different types of pavers, but the mud and other things that are necessary to ‘glue’ it down to the ground. You’ll have to spend a lot of time getting things ready so that your pavers look just right and will last for an extended period of time. If you don’t install them properly, after all, they’re going to come apart and come loose over time.
How to Install Driveway Pavers Yourself
When you start the installation process you need to carefully lay out each of your pieces so you know what you’re going to do with each one. Just because you have it written down on a piece of paper doesn’t mean you really know what it’s going to look like. That DIY driveway could be entirely different in real life. Laying everything out on the ground helps you really see how it’s going to look. That doesn’t mean you need to lay out the entire driveway, but you should lay out at least a good section so you can get a real idea of how it’s going to make things look.
If you don’t like how it looks then you haven’t lost out on much. You can take it back apart and start working on a new design. If you do like it then you can get started cementing the pieces in and making sure that they’re going to stay exactly where you want them to be. Just make sure that you start with only a few pieces first and then move on to the next section, one at a time. That’s how you’re going to get the most out of the process and the easiest steps as well.
Once you’re ready, make sure you check out some of the options that are out there. It’s going to be a whole lot easier figuring out what you want to do if you know what some of the choices are. If you start with some options that are already available you can see if you want to replicate it yourself or if you want to tweak it a little bit to get your own unique look for your paving driveway. Before you know it, you’re going to have something extremely unique and special to showcase to everyone. Wouldn’t it be really cool if you could tell them that you did the whole thing?