How do we direct people to the front door?

by Nick
(Minnesota)

Hi Nancy! I am grateful for any help you can provide.

We just moved into a house in the country with a really long driveway. The garage is at the north end of the house, and the main entrance is on the covered porch at the south end of the house. There's also a service door in between the garage doors, which seems to add to the confusion of where to come in!

Here are the issues we're having with our driveway setup:

1) Guests don't seem to know where to park. Most people seem to continue driving straight until they get to the garage. There's an access door back there, but we hate to have our guests first impression of our house be the inside of a dirty garage! We would really like guests to come in through the front door, but it doesn't seem obvious to them!

2) The previous owners had a gravel parking pad across from the walkway to the front door, but so far people don't park here unless we nag them.

3) We have this loop in the driveway, which looks nice, but isn't really functional -- it hardly ever gets used! It IS very useful for large trucks to be able to turn around, so I'd like to keep some kind of loop, but this one seems almost a waste.

I'm really lost as to how to correct these issues. Can you help?

Hi Nick,

You have a beautiful home and I can understand your frustration about getting folks to come to the front door. Luckily, the lawn in front of your house looks relatively flat and able to accommodate an oval shaped driveway without too much extra cutting and filling. This is a tried and true driveway design that would look great in front of your house. Keep the driveway going to the garage. Eliminate the side parking, loop & sidewalk. A new sidewalk would come from the front steps out to the loop. The loop can come as close as 10-12' from the house. Have it be a nice sweeping loop starting at the curve in the driveway. It appears that a loop in the front could accommodate Fed Ex and UPS trucks as well as cars. Keep the driveway in front of the house 18' wide to let cars be able to pass one another. The other sections of the driveway can be as narrow as 12' wide. Cars will naturally come to the front door with this driveway. They can park in the driveway and if you have room, you can add parking spaces off the loop.

Thanks so much for submitting your question and I hope I've helped.

Happy New Year!

Nancy