There’s no way to give landscaping advice without knowing your general location. Texas? Sweden? Vancouver? Indianapolis?

You have massive amounts of asphalt already which is a definite negative as far as curb appeal. Do you have room off to the right or left to achieve your goals for the new asphalt layout?

Would suggest a new paint color to brighten up the house. Perhaps a white or off white options will provide better aesthetics.

You really have no landscaping!

Find a local landscape company that can work with you or go to a local nursery and they might have someone who you can pay to come up with a landscape plan. You can then implement all at once or in stages to spread out the costs.

You will also need to add irrigation or expand it, if you already have it.

In my previous house I replaced the large asphalt driveway with concrete pavers, and it really improved the look of the property. If you live in a freeze/thaw climate, you can still use pavers, but there will be more maintenance.

You could put a paver path to the door and grass growing through pavers to the left of the path. That will make it greener, but still allow you to back out of the garage.

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With all that red brick, I'd have white or yellow-flowering shrubs. But, again, Maine or Texas or Sweden or India matters.

Hi! My thought is that I would like to remove the asphalt in the red area and replace it with something else...

Gravel! The sound is wonderful and look more expensive.

Boxwoods if these work in your zone.

Landscaping, & lots of it, is your answer. I would enlist the services of a landscape designer, obviously someone familiar with your climate.

I was playing around with AI ... I like the pathway, but as you can tell... it doe

sn't lead up to both garage doors. AI also changed the dimensions of the windows etc..

Nice house, please don't paint it white as someone here suggested. It is lovely as it is, and low maintenance. If you want a white house, you wouldn't have bought this one.

You could put some other paver or other surface, however, whatever you put there is going to need much more maintenance than what you have now. Provided you want to continue to use the garage, that area will be driven on a lot and get a lot of wear and tear from the weight of the cars/trucks/SUVs. I would leave the asphalt pad alone. A paver path is beautiful, but the reality of the garage doesn't really lend itself to that.

Unless you have experience with plants, and landscaping, you would benefit from hiring a landscape designer/architect. With the right plantings/plan, you will draw the eye from the asphalt, and add a lot of curb appeal. I see that you are in Virginia, and there are so many beautiful plants available to you. If you hire someone to design it, you can go about doing the install in many different ways. You can take your design, and DYI the install, or have someone else do the install of everything, or a mix-depending on what your budget will allow. Remember that you want the garden/landscape to be beautiful in all four seasons, so that you will need good foundation plants to keep winter interest, as well as the other seasons. And you need to consider how much upkeep you want to do, or if you are going to hire that out. For these reasons, I think you should hire a professional.

Should I add shutters and window boxes?

No to shutters and only add window boxes if you are prepared for a lot of maintenance. They need regular replanting and constant feeding and watering.

Aside from the pavers, I like the look of a carriage house courtyard using plantings.

Here I added pavers to the same image I posted before. I added a garage trellis and an awning over the front door as options.

To answer your other question, I like the house without shutters and window boxes. It's a stately house and does not need cottage elements.

Hire a landscape designer and do a lot of landscaping to bring some balance with that huge house.. If the side door is the one with the steps It would be nice for it to be changed dramatically to be the front door IMO. A nice wide staircase to a new much nicer front door . But of course I have no idea about layout in the house .Tracefloyd has the sort of good landscaping but pretty labor intensive to care for so maybe a bit of hint of your gardening skills and do you want to do a lot of gardening. I agree no shutters and for sure no window boxes

The side door could become the main door becaue it leads into a foyer type room that then leads into the main living room. The lcurrent front door leads into a foyer with a staircase leading upstairs and a study to tne right and sitting room to the left.

Traceflyod- I really like the updated photo with pavers replacing the asphalt pad in front of the house. i also really like the idea of adding atrellis over the garage doors. the idea of adding a awning over the current front door is interesting as well.

Does anyone else have any suggestions for modifying the front entrance?

Your home is woefully devoid of texture and curves. IMO the house requires a canopy over the front entrance.

Additionally, consider embossed color asphalt overlay for your driveway to highlight the entrance.

Here are some examples of nicely done homes with interesting landscaping. Think English Garden for a theme.

Just a rendering showing an idea for a portico over the right entrance to make it more visible, as you are considering making it the main entrance. I threw in the dormers because your house looks nice with them, but that may not be something’s you’re looking to add.

I would schedule appointments with several landscaping companies to get different ideas. Then get competing bids. Brick paving will definitely increase the elegance factor of your stunning house.
Make sure to plant things that you are happy to take care of (either by yourself or with paid assistance). Your house is like a gorgeous woman in a stylish black dress. Now she needs jewelry.

You are in Virginia. Your house has stunning, expensive masonry---Don't fight its Williamsburg style. See what you can do in this vein. Look at the Williamsburg porticos. The next owner will appreciate it.

The arched garage doors are so nice, if a lattice is in the cards, they would be nice arched as well. The squared off lattice does not show them off.

I wonder if adding a white casing/trim to the front door would help break up all the brick. also painting the fascia and soffit white to match door trim would brighten the home. Want to add you have a really lovely home.

Really appreciate all of the wonderful advice from everyone!!!

love the analogy that the house is a woman in a little black dress that just needs to put her jewlerly on!!

The white casing around the door mentioned is a good idea. A copper awning that ages into a patina nicely could be configured to fit under or to the eaves would add a curved element and in lieu of rebuilding the roofline.

Since you're looking up at the door something like this one shows more than just the underside.

Another option:

Wow!

Wow!! That looks fantastic!!!

@simplynatural -you have really blown me away!! I love it!! Thanks!!

I have been amazed by everything posted! Can’t thank everyone enough… you have really helped me visualize the potential for this house!!

We want to see pictures as you add touches to this gorgeous house.

Glad you like the rendering, @atalieplus2--and do show us pictures!