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Curb appeal is the one part of a house everybody has an opinion on and almost nobody measures. Realtors talk about it, paint companies sell it and every renovation show ends on a slow push-in to the front door. I wanted to know what readers actually react to when they see the outside of a house.
Home Stratosphere runs what I call the Reader Preference Lab. Readers react to the images they see while reading the site. They can heart an image, give it a thumbs-down or save it, and every image is tagged against a fixed list of features. For house exteriors that's the house style, siding, roof colour, porch, walkway, landscaping, garage, fence, pool and a few more. For this one I pulled every tagged exterior image from August 30 to October 8, 2026. That comes to 3,134 exteriors across 161 articles, 1,173,000 views, 9,218 positive reactions, 4,581 thumbs-downs and 2,987 saves.
The answer isn't the pool, the metal siding or anything else that looks expensive in a listing photo. What readers reward is quieter. A natural stone walkway, a full front porch, a dark roof and a house that looks like it was built with some care, Craftsman or traditional. Brick walkways, gravel and houses that look stuck in the 1990s are what they vote down.
The pool looked like a sure thing
On the first pass I compared every exterior image with the site average. Houses with a rectangular pool scored 287, which would mean almost three times the approval of an average exterior. Freeform pools scored 284. Metal siding scored 336.
Numbers like that usually have a boring explanation, and this one did. Pools and metal-clad houses mostly appear in the big luxury and modern-home articles, and those articles draw a lot of reactions on every image in them. The pool wasn't earning the reaction. The article was.
So, as with the grey tile report, I compared each exterior with the other exteriors in its own article. Same page, same readers, same day. That's the Preference Index used for everything below: 100 is the average exterior in the same article. Every number gets a 95% interval, and when that interval crosses 100 I don't claim a difference.
Compared fairly, rectangular pools come in at 105 and freeform pools at 92. Neither is different from average. Metal siding is at 100. Wood-tone siding went from 199 to 105, and paver walkways from 184 to 108.
It cuts the other way as well. Houses tagged as dated, the 1990s-and-earlier look, scored 19 on the first pass, which would make them the most hated thing on the site. Most of them sit in before-and-after articles where the "before" is meant to look tired. Compared with the other images in those articles they come in at 88. Still below average, but not a catastrophe.
What actually wins at the front of the house
The walkway turned out to matter more than I expected. Natural stone indexes 109, with an interval of 102 to 118. Pavers are close behind at 108, though their interval crosses 100. Concrete is at 97. Brick walkways are the loser at 72, with an interval of 59 to 96.
A full front porch indexes 108 (101 to 126). Houses with no porch at all come in at 96, just under average. Covered outdoor structures, the porches, pergolas and covered patios, index 105, while houses with no outdoor living space at all come in at 95.
Roof colour was the surprise. Black and charcoal roofs index 108 and grey roofs 94, which is a small gap but a consistent one. Red and terracotta tile roofs come in at 123, on a smaller sample of 66 images.
Craftsman and traditional hold their own
Craftsman houses index 115 and traditional styling 108. Modern and contemporary houses, which make up the biggest single group in the set, sit at 97. Industrial exteriors come in at 84 and mid-century at 82. Neither of those last two clears 100 with any confidence, and both lean low.
The era tags are interesting. Houses that look recent, the 2010s look, index 123. Houses that look timeless or classic come in at 110. Houses that look like they were finished this year, the very current look, sit right on average at 98.
Gravel and dated houses get voted down
The Preference Index only counts approval. I also record thumbs-downs and saves. Gravel gets 137 on thumbs-downs, and dated houses 147. Natural stone walkways get fewer thumbs-downs than average (93). Brick walkways are the odd one out. They don't get many thumbs-downs (67). Readers just don't heart them.
Did it hold?
I split the period in two and ran it again. Natural stone walkways went 106 then 115. Full porches went 106 then 119. Brick walkways went 71 then 70, and dated houses 88 then 90. Nothing changed sides.
What readers say versus what they react to
There are ten curb appeal polls on the site with 2,522 answers between them, so I can set what readers say next to what they react to.
On the front door, 53% picked a bold colour over wood (26%) or black (20%). I can't check that one in the images because front door colour isn't tagged yet. On house style the two agree. Craftsman won the poll with 38% and is the strongest style in the images at 115.
Exterior colour is where it gets interesting. Greige won the poll with 43% and black came last with 7%. In the images, black and charcoal siding indexes 115. That interval crosses 100, so I won't claim it beats average, but it's a long way from the 7% the poll would suggest. People say no to a black house and then don't vote it down when they see one.
Pools went the same way. 52% of readers picked a freeform pool and only 26% said no pool. In the images, a pool makes no measurable difference once you compare fairly. On porches, 59% want a wraparound. There are only 38 wraparound porches in the images, too few to score, but a full front porch is one of the clearest winners in the set.
The walkway poll is the closest match of all. Pavers won with 50% and gravel came last with 21%, and gravel is also the walkway that gets thumbed down in the images.
The house these readers would build
Put the winners together and you get a Craftsman or traditional house with a full front porch, a natural stone walkway, a dark roof, a covered outdoor space and plenty of planting out front. Lush front yards index 105, and 39% picked lush in the planting poll. Give it a bold front door if you trust the poll, and skip the pool if you're doing it for the curb appeal.
What I'd do with this
If I were listing a house, I'd photograph the walkway and the porch, not just the facade. If the walkway is gravel or tired concrete, natural stone is the upgrade I'd price out first.
If I sold roofing, I'd lead with charcoal and black. And if I were writing listing copy, I wouldn't lead with the pool. Readers say they want one, but it doesn't move their reaction to the house.
The caveats
These are whole houses, not features. When someone hearts an exterior I can't tell whether it was the porch or the planting. A lot of the images are before-and-after composites tagged as one image, the views are a sampled estimate, forty days is still early, and this is reactions, not offers. Nobody bought a house.
What I can say is narrower. Among the exterior images on Home Stratosphere from August 30 to October 8, 2026, compared with the other exteriors in the same article, natural stone walkways, full front porches, dark roofs and traditional styling landed above average, and brick walkways and dated houses landed below. Pools and metal siding, which looked like big winners on the first pass, made no measurable difference. That held in both halves of the period.
This report first appeared in Home Stratosphere on Substack, where Pro members get the full PDF report and the raw data behind it.
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