Do you dream of a house with a white picket fence? You're not alone. The Washington Post consulted fencing experts to report on suitable options for this area. While white picket fences are very popular, the Post article describes the benefits and drawbacks of different fence types: chain-link, wood, aluminum, vinyl, composite, and ornamental steel. After reading the Post story, we started noticing interesting fences around DC. Below are a summary of the article's positives and negatives and photos of local fences....
Below are the fence types recommended for the DC area. Which would type of fence would you pick?
Chain-link: durable, low priced but not considered aesthetically pleasing.
Wood: the two most used woods in DC are pressure-treated yellow pine (from this region so less expensive, but more likely to warp, twist or shrink) and natural cedar (holds up better but not underground - pressure-treated posts are recommended).
Aluminum: lightweight, cheaper than steel, but not easy to customize.
Vinyl: easy to customize (different looks and details) but prone to cracking. Not aesthetically pleasing (looks like plastic) and pricey right now because vinyl fencing is derived from petroleum products.
Composite: durable but heavy so needs to be used with a steel or wood frame. Not as reliable, and not suited for steep terrain (which is common terain in DC).
Ornamental steel: attractive, strong, secure, and long-lasting, but requires maintenance to avoid rust. Also, bars are made thinner so offer less privacy than the other types.
For more information, tips and price estimates for each type, see the table comparing fence types from the Washington Post and the full article.
- Rachael Grad
[photo before the jump from Country Living]
>>To All AT Washington Posts
Fences are a giant pain.
When I was a kid living on US Air Force Bases, there were no fences dividing up the yards. All the kids would play in the great big spaces between the houses, we could cut across the yards to get to school and Moms could keep an eye on us kids playing several houses down.
We put the dogs on long tethers when they wanted to go outside and we all somehow knew how far to mow the grass - and maybe a little extra.
When we bought our own house, we had a 6' tall "privacy fence" - so instead of looking out on a long continuous park, we stared at a blank redwood wall - and when mowing the lawn, I had to use a trimmer to cut the grass that the mower couldn't get next to the fence.
view bepsf's profile
Yeah, but when the neighbors 17 year old son was a peeping tom, a fence sure kept his nose off of my window panes.
view Cally's profile
Love my fence. It's aluminum. My husband bought the sections off the internet and did the work himself. With the sale price of the fence and the free shipping, the fence cost us less than 2 grand and it really made life a lot easier for us. My dog can now walk freely in the backyard and I don't worry about the neighborhood kids wandering in on us.
view rose's profile
I can't stand back yards without fences. I don't want my house to open up onto a gigantic park, I want my own private space where I don't feel like I'm on display every time I step out my back door.
As far as front yards go, I like low picket or ornamental iron fences, as long as they have flowers growing behind them.
view gertie's profile
Fence-free yards can work in settings with mature trees and landscaping and other natural features, as long as there are no issues concerning dogs, nosy neighbors, or swimming pools. In featureless, flat yards such as in new subdivisions, they anchor the space and add visual interest--I was just at a house where the only way you could tell where each yard stopped was by the direction of the mowing pattern. It looked awful and made the yard anything but inviting.
view madsarah's profile
We have pine and we have to replace it soon - it was put together VERY badly.
Not looking forward to the expense. We have a HOA and it has to be wood; they don't allow anything else.
I think some fast-growing shrubs and trees will help the look.
view Valerie's profile
Walking around a bit, I really dislike the plastic picket fences. There's that fakeness that's just not nice... it's just the look you're going for and it get ruined by fakeness. It's probably a result of growing up with so much fake brick and fake wood (not faux bois, really crap fake wood). Authentic materials have a tactile sense and a visual truth, that "close enough in another material" looks quite phony to me. It's uncalming because I want to fix it. You don't get quite the same look with ease of maintenance, you have a different fence altogether.
On the other hand, if you can make that plastic look like any fence you wanted, why not go ahead and be imaginative. Why go make a mock wooden fence, when you can have an authentic plastic fence?
view K T G's profile
I've always liked ornamental steel the best.
Privacy fences are the very ugliest fences, in my opinion; even chainlink is better.
view nausved's profile