25 Beautiful Walkway Ideas to Elevate Your Home and Yard
These paths lead up to the prettiest house on the block.
Unless you live in an apartment, guests have to walk up a path to get to your front door and entryway. A walkway is a necessary addition to your home’s landscaping that ensures visitors’ safety and comfort while protecting your lawn and beloved plants from getting trampled. It can be as simple as plonking down a brick or stone path, but the best walkway ideas for your yard or garden blend form and function. They provide a smooth and safe place to step while complementing your home’s architecture and opening up a whole new world of landscaping possibilities.
Though gravel, dirt, and mulch are more cost-effective walkway options, especially since they’re relatively easy to DIY, solid materials like brick, stone, and pavers are the most stable and accessible options. However, a dirt walkway can look just as beautiful as a stone one—it really all depends on your home’s aesthetic.
No matter what your style or your budget, you’re sure to find a favorite among the enchanting walkway ideas we’ve rounded up. They’re all from designer projects, so they’re the perfect jumping-off points to inspire yours.
For more landscaping inspiration:
- 85 Landscaping Ideas for an Enchanting Outdoor Space
- 21 Front Yard Landscaping Ideas With Rocks, Stone, and Mulch
- 27 Driveway Ideas for Every Style Home
Garden Gate
One way to add style to your walkway is with a gate. Designer Cynthia Collins wanted her house to revolve around the gorgeous outdoor space, so every little detail around this fairy-tale cottage mattered. While the wooden gate doesn’t do much at all for security, it adds a charming layer to the overall design.
Brick Walkway and Patio
On the other side of Cynthia Collins’s home, she has a wide-open outdoor space with a walkway that leads to a covered patio. Both the walkway and patio are laid in brick, creating a cohesive and elevated look.
Stepping Stones
If your home is surrounded by greenery, you don’t want a walkway that feels out of place—you want to blend in. So rather than pour a concrete walkway, choose natural, flat stones to work with as designer Elspeth Benoit did here. When she moved into this house on a hillside in Los Angeles, the steepness made the landscape design difficult, but she appreciated having the extra space in the front and back yards during the pandemic.
Porcelain Tile
Porcelain tiles look extremely chic inside or outside, so using them for a walkway sets a luxe precedent before any guest enters your home. Designer Susannah Charbin chose soft fountain grass to frame this porcelain tile walkway, adding movement to the entry.
Pavers and Pebbles
There’s no need to choose just one walkway material—you can easily go with two to create an interesting pathway. Designer Kathryn M. Ireland used both pebbles and pavers to redo the path up to her Santa Monica guesthouse where a driveway had been.
Terraced Stone
Elevate your walkway in both the literal and stylistic sense by building several different levels into the lead-up to your house. Architect Gil Schafer was inspired by Japanese water gardens when designing this Maine property. “It was a great way to make the transition from the lower to the upper level feel more seamless,” he explains.
Flower Border
Pam and Don Schneider wanted their home to be a tranquil garden oasis, so they included beautiful greenery and fragrant flowers in every aspect of the outdoor design with the help of their friend and Pamela Pospisil, president at Pospisil & Brown Architects. The hydrangeas framing the paver-and-gravel walkway add stunning pops of color and set a calming vibe.
Hedge Archway
Arched hedges are like nature’s doorways—they define two separate spaces. Once you get past the ficus plant, you’re welcomed into this Palm Beach home. Designer Jeff Lincoln wanted to draw visitors to the entrance, so he added a few potted plants right by the door to say, “People live here. Come in!” as he puts it.
Paver Pattern
Add a bit of whimsy to stone pavers by placing them in a fun pattern. On this Palm Beach property, Kemble Interiors situated the stones in the lush landscaping in a hopscotch-like pattern, creating a much more playful walkway than a straight line would’ve been.
Overgrown Stones
Sometimes forgetting about uniformity can be so freeing—so forget about having a super-manicured walkway and let your plants grow onto it a little . As long as they aren’t ruining the stone or brick, do as designer Katie Ridder did at her own home and allow the flowers spill over onto the surface. It sets a beautiful scene.
Paver Extension
The borders of yard amenities like a pool or fire pit can be pretty narrow. If that’s the case in your yard, lay a few pavers along the existing stone to create a wider walkway. Leia T. Ward of LTW Design did so on this Connecticut property, allowing the grass to peek through between the spaced-out pavers and creating a more interesting design.
Pavers With Native Grasses
Don’t immediately remove the existing plants in your yard if they don’t match your vision—instead, work with your landscape designer to plan a walkway that incorporates the native species. The sway of the long grass in the breeze makes the yard of this Nantucket home designed by Michael Ellison even more inviting.
Mini Hedge Maze
Nothing beats a garden maze, but those oversize hedges are a serious commitment to maintain. Capture the same energy with a mini maze for your walkway made of mini hedges and fragrant flowers. Designer Podge Bune crafted this stunning walkway with pebbles and added a wooden fence to one of the exits, really embracing the cottagecore energy.
Ivy-Covered Trellis
Lead your walkway up to an entrance completely covered in ivy, as pillow maker Rebecca Vizard did at her Louisiana home. With pavers (laid diagonally for extra interest) and pebbles for the actual walkway and long flowers and grass for the yard, the lush fig ivy framing the front door makes this entryway enchanting.
Light Limestone
Lay down a limestone walkway for a lighter, more neutral color palette. If everything else inside and outside of your home is light in color, like it is at this Southern California house by Rob Diaz, then you’ll want a walkway to match.
Brick “Pavers”
If you can't decide between brick and pavers, get the best of both worlds by combining the two, as Courtnay Tartt Elias of Creative Tonic did here. The unique pathway situation at this Houston home has the patina of the brick, lets the lush grass poke through, and still won’t get your shoes dirty.
Parquet Brick
Depending on where you live, the public sidewalk might cut into your yard. If that’s your situation, create a walkway using a different material, like brick laid in a parquet pattern, to create obvious separation, as Katie Logan Leblanc and Jensen Killen of Logan Killen Interiors did at this New Orleans family’s home.
Oversize Pavers
For coastal homes or areas without a ton of green space, the team at Alexander Design suggest extra-large pavers that offer plenty of smooth surfaces for bare feet while still allowing the landscape to come through. Pavers stay cooler than natural stone too.
Herringbone Brick
For a regal walkway, like the one that leads up to designer Wendy Wurtzburger’s home, brick laid out in a herringbone pattern is the classic way to go. To make it more casual, allow grass to sprout between the bricks and blend into the yard.
Scattered Stones
For a casual and coastal feel, opt for a walkway made of natural stone pavers. Do as architect James Carter and designer Jane Hawkins Hoke did here and lay them out in a wide, organic formation with plenty of grass in between.
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