Homeowners wishing to make their patio into an outdoor room such as a kitchen or outdoor living space wonder if they should cover it. What type cover should they choose? Many homeowners only know cable home shows for home improvement ideas. They give homeowners ideas like pergolas or solid patio coverings like metal roofing or extending the existing roof over the patio.
It’s normal for homeowners to go with choices they’ve seen when they’re researching. That’s why online wish books were created. However, they’ve also seen commercials showing the benefits of retractable awnings. Awnings offer homeowners seeking a covering solution more pros like these three than cons.
1. Protection From The Sun’s Harmful Rays
While sun makes flowers, trees, grass, and food gardens grow, its harmful rays damage people, animals, and furnishings. Shading your patio obviously means you can spend more time outdoors. What you spend it sitting on is made more comfortable by an awning.
The textile isn’t stiff and burned. The fabric color is still bold and vibrant. The wood it’s made of isn’t faded like barn wood. You’re happy for your friends and coworkers to use it.
Many homeowners aren’t aware that awnings can protect the furniture indoors as well. Flooring and furnishings all suffer when sunlight hits them, especially in southern and western facing rooms. Window treatments usually protect against this, but a little added protection works wonders.
2. They’re Cool
Awnings provide shade. Many brands of awning are made of UV resistant fabric. This provides those sitting beneath it protection from the harmful rays of the sun. Unfortunately, these come with the heat from the sun. You, the kids, and the pets suffer from the heat.
The temperature beneath the awning is reduced by up to 65 percent as the sun shines on southern facing doors or patios. On western exposures, that number increases to up to 77 percent. This not only keeps people and pets from overheating on summer days, but the shade keeps that side of the house a little cooler. The HVAC won’t work as hard to cool those rooms, and the power bill will benefit from that.
3. Awnings Add Value To A Home
Energy efficiency, curb appeal, and useable square footage are only a few of the ways value is added to a home, and they’re keywords potential buyers seek the most.
When we hear the words energy efficiency, we automatically picture new windows and doors. What these do is prevent heat and cool inside from getting to the cold or heat outside. Awnings should be added due to their ability to cut down on the HVAC strain as well as that on the power bill as explained above.
Curb appeal is what catches the eye of a potential home buyer. Homeowners dress up the outside of the house in invitation for seeing the wonder inside it. Awnings appeal to buyers. They see themselves entertaining or catching a breeze beneath its brightly colored cloth with food cooking on the grill as the kids and dog sniff appreciatively.
Awnings provide homeowners with useable square footage in the form of an outdoor room. Finishing the basement and attic are great ways to add useable square footage, and the first homeowners consider. Outdoor space isn’t a room (or square footage) without boundaries.
The awning is the touch homeowners need to turn an ordinary patio into an outdoor room. Seasons beneath an awning almost don’t matter, unless you live where it snows or gets supremely cold. The lovely smell of rain can be enjoyed better beneath an awning than watching it through cloudy windows. The wonders of each season can be enjoyed in your new outdoor room.
Aside from these function and aesthetic benefits, awnings provide homeowners with a sense of pride. Assets like awnings give homeowners and edge over neighbors sweltering in the heat or neighbors with boring pergolas as compared to your brightly colored awning.
