Your driveway has a big impact on the ‘curb appeal’ of your home; it’s one of the first features a visitor sees and can say a lot about your home. A well-maintained driveway that ties into a beautiful front entrance landscape, makes for a welcome first impression. When you’re thinking of upgrading your front landscape and driveway landscape, there are a couple of common options, including paving, full interlock, or a mix of interlock and paving. There are benefits to all 3 options offered by MPS, let’s take a look at them.
Asphalt paving is the most common material used for driveways in the GTA. Asphalt is the least expensive option and gives a clean, modern look to your front entrance landscape. Asphalt is easy to maintain and if done well it’ll last a long time. However, over time, if areas of your driveway naturally settle, you’ll need to re-pave the entire driveway. One other thing to consider is upkeep, asphalt will fade over time, from a dark black colour to light grey, so if you like the look of a dark driveway then you’ll need to maintain it with an asphalt sealing product annually.
A driveway with full interlock paving stones creates a ‘show stopping’ look for your home and front landscape. Incorporating interlock pavers into your driveway creates a statement piece and helps tie in the colours of your home’s exterior and landscape together. Along with looking great, another feature we like about interlock driveways is the ability to repair them. Interlock driveways offer the ability to quickly and easily fix any bricks that settle or become stained, by simply lifting and relaying a new stone. If a section of your driveway starts to settle, you won’t need to re-do the entire driveway just the small section. However, full interlock driveways are expensive, about 3 times more expensive than traditional asphalt paving. This is because interlock paving stones are a more expensive material and they require a deeper base than asphalt. Another quality to consider is the difficulty that interlocking paving stones create for snow removal. Due to the natural ridges and joints between interlock paving stones, it creates a difficult surface to shovel or plow snow.
From an esthetic, functionality, and budget perspective, the landscape designers at MPS encourage our customers to go with a traditional paved asphalt driveway with an interlock detail. The interlock paving stone detail can be used as a border, running along the sides of the driveway, or paving stones can be cut into the top of the driveway by your garage. The interlock detail is a great way to tie in your front entrance landscape to your driveway, giving it a designer look. An asphalt driveway with an interlock border is a cost-effective way to add a “statement piece” to your front landscape. Interlock details will also have less of an effect on snow removal since the main part of the driveway that is plowed is asphalt. If you’re planning to put in an interlock paving detail, we do recommend re-paving your driveway to ensure both the driveway and paving stones are level. Sometimes if you’re trying to set in paving stones to an existing driveway, the stones will need to be graded to match the driveway and they will look unlevel in some areas.
