How to hide ugly fence? Usually, fences contribute to a negative look of the overall house as they are rusty over time, while many fence-making is not as creative as one would imagine. As time passes, these industrial-looking fences might give a negative impression to one’s backyard, and fixing or changing them would cost more than you would expect.
Hence, this article will provide creative solutions and work around to economically hide your fences and improve the overall aesthetic of your backyard with a little effort. Here are the creative fence ideas to improve your backyard. If you want to just fill some fence gaps, we already created a guide with great and easy-to-implement ideas.
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Ideas on How To Hide Ugly Fence
1. Painting Your Current Fence
Time to show off your painting skills! The most basic and cost-effective method to improve your existing fences is to paint them. A fresh layer of paint would remove the monotonous and rusty feel of these ugly fences that gave a negative impression on your backyard and would subside and further improve the overall landscape.
Furthermore, by matching the landscape color with the painting, one can drastically improve the beauty of one’s backyard, and the resonance between their color would positively affect its aesthetic look.
Paintings can be of numerous types, and their combinations can be infinite, depending on your creativity and coloring skills. You can mix up multiple colors to give your yard a more vibrant and bright look, which would put a smile on anyone staring at your stroke of creativity.
Furthermore, drawing murals and creative images on fences, especially wooden ones, would also catch the eye of many people, and they will be struck in awe of your attractive fences.
2. Planting Climbers
Not the most creative of the bunch? Well, do not fret! Let nature work its wonders! Climbers are a natural solution to your ugly fence dilemma. These climbing plants naturally make their way up fences and cover your fences, giving a natural yet elegant outlook to your garden.
Moreover, adding beautiful flowers alongside the green leaves of such climbers further enhances the beauty of the fences while covering their ugly sides. When it comes to selecting which flowers to grow as climbers, there are numerous beautiful options to make your fences look much more elegant.
The Chinese wisteria, climbing roses, and the morning glory are the few most sought-after flowers that many gardeners use in covering their fences. The purplish-white texture of the wisteria flower provides a calming aesthetic look to the eye.
The climbing roses reach a near height of 3.5 meters tall while providing an enchanting pink color that soothes the whole environment. The morning glories further bewitches its viewers with its trumpet-shaped flowers, which give off a vibrant and magnificent look on the fence.
These selections of flowers need consistent attention to bloom to their utmost potential and hence require one person to work hard to keep them blooming. Other less attentive alternatives to these would be the Boston Ivy and the firethorn plants. They are easy to manage and are ever-growing climbers.
3. Planting Bamboo as Fences
If hardworking is not your forte, you might as well plant some bamboo shoots in front of your fences. Bamboo is one of the best eco friendly options for fences used widely amongst gardeners and can also provide a privacy cover for those who prefer no peeping eyes into their yards.
Bamboo plants are rapidly growing plants that are sturdy with a high compressible strength than wood and rival the tensile strength of steel! Furthermore, it is a very cheap option, in contrast to wooden fencing, and is durable, lasting up to 20 years or more.
Usually, Bamboo fencing is about 8 feet long and is held together through wooden hemp cords or wires going through the bamboo. They are easy to install and are a natural repellant against pests and weeds growing out of the fences.
These bamboo screens are used in creative ways by adding art between the fencing screens, and they also provide privacy and a touch of elegance for those viewing the fancy from the streets. The drawback to these fencing alternatives is that they are flammable and cannot be nailed together.
4. Hanging Flower Pots on the Fences
Hanging on beautiful, elegant flowers and hanging plants further exemplifies the beauty of fences that covers up the cons of an old rusty fence. Moreover, hanging plants and flowers enhance the texture and bring life to the monotonous view that your old industrial fence gives off.
Choosing from different hanging plants would depend upon the color scheme and the aesthetic you need for your borders in the backyard to portray the viewers from the outside. Hence, the calibrachoa, pansies, purple shamrock, and the hanging fuchsia are our recommendations for hanging plants.
Hanging fuchsia gives you a purplish-maroon texture and a vibrant look to your fence. They also attract hummingbirds, increasing their attractiveness. The purple shamrock is a dark purple colored flower that bodes well with a dark fence and enhances the overall landscape of a yard. It is known for its leaves opening in the light and closing in the dark.
The calibrachoa is a pink-leaved plant that is one of the most commonly used flowering plants on fences and yards. In contrast to that, pansies are easy to grow, self-seeding hanging flowers that are light purple. One can use a mixture of these hanging flowers on their fences to further beautify their fences and backyards for the pleasure of their eyes.
5. Planting Bushes or Arborvitae
Arborvitae are dense and thick coniferous plants that act as a fence and a privacy cover when they are planted closely. By planting these plants closely, one can hide chain links or old rusty fences, giving a calming and cool natural aesthetic that is very soothing to view.
The most advantageous quality of arborvitae is its ruggedness and growth speed. They mature quickly into tall coniferous plants and can thrive in almost all variety of soil conditions. Moreover, they are low maintenance and do not require much attention for them to grow properly to their required height.
These plants can be grown close together for that extra privacy, and also, if a spacious backyard is your choice, they can be planted farther away, which gives away a spacious look to the overall garden.
Furthermore, the spaces between the arborvitae can be filled by inserting other plants and flowers between them, which adds to the beauty of the arborvitae and gives a much better outlook than before.
6. Privacy Screens
If growing plants is not your hobby, why not buy a privacy screen instead? Privacy coverings are premade brush fencings that can be attached on top of your current fencing to cover the fences. These can be either plastic-made, wooden or bamboo-fenced privacy coverings.
These privacy fences are usually 4-6 feet tall to do their job, which is to provide privacy from the streets or neighbors. Furthermore, these screens are available in an innumerable variety of colors, textures, and designs to suit the need of the customer.
They can also stretch the limits of creativity by adding art styles embedded into these screens, and paintings can be attached on top of these to elaborate your style. They can turn a dull-looking fence into a living wall!
It is pretty easy to install such screens, and you do not need to be an expert to install these fences to decorate your borders and backyard. You could request a helping hand from a friend or install it yourself without too much expert information.
7. Illumination Using Lighting on Fences
A strand of fairy lights can improve the aesthetic look of anything, and dull-looking fences can be decorated using them. Fairy lights are fantastic because they frequently don’t need a power source; they can be battery- or solar-powered, allowing you to relocate them wherever you want in your yard without the need of an electrician.
There are also many different garden lighting combinations and designs available, from strings made to drape over a fence to net-like lights that can be distributed across the entire fence to create the ideal sparkling display for your nighttime garden events.
Furthermore, the introduction of RGB lighting has opened the gates for innumerable color combinations suited for different events ranging from formal weddings to after-party celebrations.
8. Planting Trees
A fence can provide security and seclusion, but you are not required to look at it. Consult a local specialist in lawn maintenance and landscaping for advice on the kinds of trees you can plant along your fence line.
It is a bright choice to plant trees that can at least grow to the height of your fence. Excellent fast-growing types, like bamboo, may meet the requirement. Bamboo can approximately grow up to 91 cm per day and can be as tall as 40 meters.
Other varieties of hedge trees include amellia, michelia figo, and photinia. If you feel that soundproofing might be beneficial, michelia figo is a well-liked choice.
9. Sowing Seeds To Grow Hedges
Hedges are very common in use for creating borders alongside backyards, so why not use them to hide your ugly fence? Planting hedges can add depth to your monotonous boundary and give it a lively look.
Moreover, hedges shield against wind and noise, thus keeping your garden a safe and comfortable place. They are very easy to manage and are very durable for a long period. You can let it grow further if you require more privacy from the outside, or you can cut them to give it a cleaner look.
One of the popular types of hedges used is the boxwood hedges that are usually seen in European royalties. Furthermore, they can be easily cut into a variety of shapes for your preference. It is important to research which plant you should use as some are poisonous to children and pets.
10. Removing and Renovating Your Current Fence
More drastic measures of removing old rusty fences are usually replacing them with new fences. In case the fences are not structurally stuck in the ground, which is hard to replace, you can replace them with a variety of fences such as metal, vinyl, chain link fences, or wood fences.
Chain link fences have chains intertwined between two fence posts that act as a border. These fences are usually monotonous and not as aesthetically pleasing as you might want. Vinyl fences are similar to wood fences, but they are made up of polyvinyl chloride material to provide a strong yet glossy texture to the fences. If you use vinyl fences and they have gaps, you can easily cover them.
Metal fences are barriers made up of metallic materials with spikes on top to protect the yard from trespassers trying to vault over the fences. Finally, the most cost-effective of these fences are the wooden fences, and they are painted to give a beautiful outlook to the yard.
