Your home degrading over time is no secret, and thankfully there are simple steps you can take to protect it from the elements and improve your house design along the way. House rendering is a great way to improve the look of your home to impress visitors, neighbors, and potential buyers.

If you’re planning on renting your home, you might want to think about renovating, and especially rendering since first impressions matter. This article will show you everything you need to know about rendering a house and its benefits to help you understand why you should consider this for your house.

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What is house rendering?

Rendering a house means covering an exterior wall with cement, acrylic, lime, or other mixture to protect the exposed bricks and other materials from erosion and cracking. Render is a plastered finish for external walls, giving them a smooth finish. Usually, it is built up in two or three coats, making it less likely for surface cracks to develop later on.

Rendered bricks extend the life of your walls by ten or twenty years. It stops moisture and dampness from damaging the walls and also keeps your house dry and warm in cold and rainy weather. And the best part is that it will aesthetically transform the house’s exterior, hiding its imperfect brickwork and giving it a modern look.

Types of render

There are many different types of render one can choose from and some of them are:

• Through-colored products. The pigment is added in the manufacturing process, coloring the entire render and not just the surface, meaning the walls don’t need to be painted.

• Polymer renders. They are pre-mixed, pre-colored, and often through-colored. 

• Cement renders. These are standard options and are mixed on-site. Usually applied in several coats and painted when dried. They need to be painted regularly to keep looking their best.

• Lime renders. These are making a comeback, after not being used for decades. Lime is considered better than cement, but it’s more expensive and harder to apply.

• Acrylic renders. They are most often applied as a thin finish coat to seal and enhance the appearance. They also bring texture and color.

• Silicone render. This type offers a longer lifespan and when it rains the silicone will allow rainwater to wash away dirt.

Benefits of rendering a house

One of the most important benefits of rendering is that it increases the weather resistance of the property, reducing the cost of maintenance. It is also one of the best solutions to reduce moisture that is absorbed into the blockwork. Nowadays, renders add different additives within the formula which increases the insulation levels of the property. This can be a great way of saving money and decreasing the environmental impact of your house.

Aside from protecting it from the elements, rendering the walls of your house can make it more efficient by saving on the energy used to heat it. Acrylic-insulated render is a great product to upgrade energy efficiency without compromising the interior of your house. Also, rendering will allow you to change the look of your house, making it more appealing.

Photo by Micah Carlson from Unsplash

Can it be a DIY project, and does it need any special permissions?

A person can render their exterior walls by themselves. But, DIY rendering can be very difficult, expensive, and time-consuming especially if you don’t have the equipment and training to do a good job. Hiring a professional would do a much better job and you might just save yourself from costly mistakes.

You probably won’t need planning permission for repair and maintenance to render the house, but you should think about your neighbors and how the new look will affect them. If you live in a protected area, you will probably need permission before changing the look of your home. It’s best to check your paperwork and deeds before you start rendering, as your property might be listed and part of a group of properties. In this case, you’ll need a specific RAL or BS (British Standard) color. 

Final thoughts

If you plan to renovate your home, improve its aesthetic quality, and make your exteriors more weather-resistant, then rendering is just what you’re looking for. And you don’t necessarily need to render the entire house to give it a new look, you can just leave one part as a cool design feature. Mixing finishes to render a house is also popular nowadays, but make sure that the materials are installed in the right order, and keep in mind the added costs to your renovations.