See a New Deck on Your Own House

How to take the photo

Stand back far enough to get the whole back wall of the house and the ground in front of it in one shot. Daylight, not dusk. If the deck is going off an upstairs door, make sure that door is in the picture, because that is where the tool puts the floor. A phone photo is fine. That is what I use.

What you are looking at

The render shows the material and the railing on your house, at the height you picked, in your light. What it cannot show is the framing underneath, the footings, or how the ledger ties into your rim joist. Those are the parts that decide whether a deck lasts, and they are the parts I spend the most time on. The picture is for deciding what you want. The site visit is for deciding how it gets built.

It will not be exact. The tool is good at keeping your house your house and putting the deck where a deck goes, but board color, railing style and post placement are an approximation. Treat it like a sketch, not a drawing.

Picking a material from the picture

Run it more than once. Cedar and composite look different on the same house, and a dark aluminum rail reads very differently from a cedar one against light siding. The tool lets you change the choices and re-render the same photo, so compare before you decide. TimberTech is my default because it holds up here and it carries the longest warranty. Cedar is the one people fall in love with in the picture and then have to maintain.

What comes after the picture

Once you know what you want it to look like, the next question is what it costs, and that depends on size, height, material, railing and stairs more than on the square footage. I wrote that up on its own page. After that, I come out, look at the wall and the ground, and turn it into a real number in writing.

What drives the cost of a deck →

Replacing an old deck? Check whether it is safe first →